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Congenital lack and extraordinary ability in object and spatial imagery: An investigation on sub-types of aphantasia and hyperphantasia

Palermo and colleagues · Consciousness and Cognition

In an online survey of 490 Italian adults, about 3% scored very low on a questionnaire's object imagery scale (pictures of things) and 3.5% on its spatial scale (layouts and rotation), with smaller groups at the high end. The low object group reported weak or missing images of faces, objects and events, yet still reported dream images; the low spatial group reported trouble mainly with mental rotation. Both low groups reported a poorer sense of direction, but neither differed reliably from controls on everyday memory or face recognition. Nearly all measures were self-report.