Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire
DOI: 10.1037/t05959-000
Marks, D. F. (2014). Vividness of visual imagery questionnaire. PsycTESTS Dataset. doi:10.1037/t05959-000
Abstract
The Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) is a test that measures the clarity of mental images in people's minds. It consists of 16 items that ask participants to visualize things like a friend or a country scene and rate the clarity of the image on a 5-point scale. The questionnaire is reliable, according to a study with psychology students, which found that it had a high level of consistency over time. This tool can be useful for researchers studying the relationship between mental imagery and various cognitive processes.
Authors
- David F. Marks1
Visual Imagery Research Summary
Ever notice how some people can close their eyes and see incredibly vivid mental images—almost like watching a movie in their mind—while others see only vague shadows or darkness? This isn't just a quirk of imagination. Scientists have long suspected that these differences in visual imagery ability are genuinely important for understanding how our brains work, and they matter in ways we're only beginning to appreciate.
Researchers have been investigating this puzzle for decades. In 1973, psychologist D.F. Marks developed the first systematic way to measure visual imagery vividness—a questionnaire that asked people to imagine specific scenes and rate how clear and detailed their mental pictures were. The original test used 16 different scenarios, from picturing a familiar friend's face to imagining a sunrise. The results were striking: people reported wildly different levels of vividness, and these differences seemed consistent and measurable.
This foundational work was so valuable that Marks expanded it in 1995, creating an extended version called the VVIQ-2 with 32 items instead of 16. The new questionnaire takes people on a guided mental tour through increasingly complex scenarios. You might start by visualizing a close friend's face and body posture, then progress to imagining dynamic scenes like a fast-moving car on a highway with traffic whizzing by, a beach scene with swimmers and hot air balloons drifting overhead, a bustling railway station, and finally a garden with birds pecking at the lawn. For each mental image, people rate their experience on a simple scale: from "perfectly clear and as vivid as normal vision" down to "no image at all, you only know you're thinking of something."
What makes this research significant is that it transforms something deeply personal and subjective—how vivid our thoughts are—into something measurable and scientifically rigorous. By having thousands of people complete these questionnaires, researchers can map the landscape of human imagination. Some people consistently score high, experiencing nearly photographic mental imagery; others struggle to form any visual picture at all, a condition some researchers call aphantasia. Most fall somewhere in between, with variable vividness depending on the type of scene they're imagining.
Why should any of this matter to you? Because visual imagery ability affects real-world performance in surprising ways. Athletes use mental visualization to practice skills without physical repetition. Artists and designers rely on vivid mental imagery to create. People with certain types of brain injuries or conditions may lose the ability to visualize. Understanding these differences could help us develop better training methods, create more effective therapies for neurological conditions, and appreciate the genuine diversity in how human brains process information. The questionnaire has become a standard tool in psychology and neuroscience, freely available for researchers worldwide—a testament to how one simple but clever measurement approach can open doors to understanding the architecture of human thought.
This summary was generated by AI and may contain errors. Always refer to the original paper for accuracy.