Where Does “Immersive but Non-Visual” Imagery Fit?
2 min readByDeborah Kilmer
I’ve had a clarification about my imagery that might be useful for others who feel misclassified by standard aphantasia questionnaires.
When I imagine a scene (e.g., “cat in a tree”), I can construct it fully and vividly in space and structure: the tree growing up from the ground, branch layout, the cat’s position and color, surrounding ground, context, and associated sounds, textures, and the feel of wind. It’s immersive and coherent, almost like stepping into the scene.
However, the visual phenomenology is low. The scene isn’t visually illuminated in the way questionnaires often seem to assume. It’s more accurate to describe it as existing in shadow: spatially precise, richly contextual, and embodied, but without bright, pictorial “seeing.”
This led me to realize I may have answered some earlier questionnaires inconsistently. I initially interpreted questions about “seeing,” “vividness,” or “imagery” differently than the test intended. Later questions clarified the intent, and my answers shifted accordingly.
The term that currently feels most accurate for my experience is:
immersive spatial imagery with low visual phenomenology
This doesn’t fit neatly into aphantasia vs. hyperphantasia binaries, and it highlights a limitation in many instruments that conflate visual brightness with imaginal richness.
I’m sharing this in case others recognize a similar pattern and have struggled with how to categorize or describe their imagery. If there’s existing research or terminology that better captures this, I’d be interested to learn more.