What This Study Is About
Researchers investigated whether a person's ability to use mental imagery—the "mind's eye"—affects how well a specific psychological training works for social anxiety. They wanted to see if people who can easily picture scenarios in their minds get more benefit from a program designed to change negative thinking patterns.
How They Studied It
The study involved 72 participants who experienced high levels of social anxiety. They were split into two groups:
- The Training Group: Completed a 5-day online program called "Cognitive Bias Modification" (CBM-I). They read ambiguous social stories (like a friend not replying to a text) and were trained to imagine positive or neutral outcomes.
- The Control Group: Read neutral, everyday stories without the imagery training.
The researchers measured the participants' general mental imagery across different senses (sight, sound, and even "emotional feelings") using a questionnaire called the Psi-Q. They then compared how much each person's anxiety and negative thinking decreased based on their imagery strength.
What They Found
The training successfully reduced social anxiety and negative thinking, but it worked much better for some than others. People with stronger mental imagery—especially those who could easily "feel" emotions in their mind—saw the biggest improvements. Specifically, those with high imagery ability showed a significant drop in social anxiety symptoms (between 11% and 18%), while those with lower imagery ability (closer to aphantasia, the inability to visualize) saw much less benefit from this specific training.
What This Might Mean
This suggests that "one size does not fit all" for anxiety treatments. Because this training relies on the mind's eye to "re-script" social situations, it may be less effective for people with aphantasia. For those who cannot easily visualize, different types of therapy that don't rely on mental pictures—such as those using sounds, photos, or purely verbal logic—might be more helpful.
One Interesting Detail
The study found that "emotional imagery"—the ability to mentally recreate the feeling of being relaxed or excited—was actually a better predictor of success in the program than the ability to see clear mental pictures.