Research library

“Unseen strategies” what can the experience of Aphantasia teach us about cognitive strategies in memory?

Hayes, Miles and Evans · New Ideas in Psychology

Five people with aphantasia described leaning on facts, a soundless inner voice, and notes, photos and other people to remember. The authors suggest these strategies help but only partly offset real memory difficulties.

No clear evidence of a difference between individuals who self-report an absence of auditory imagery and typical imagers on auditory imagery tasks

Pounder and colleagues · PLOS ONE

Twenty-nine people with aphantasia and 30 typical imagers did two tasks thought to need sound imagery: judging, from imagination alone, whether one syllable of a familiar song is sung higher than another, and sorting blended voices between two speakers. Most of the aphantasia group also reported little or no ability to imagine sounds, yet the groups did not clearly differ on either task, even among those reporting the weakest sound imagery. The authors suggest people may solve such tasks another way, for example by treating pitch as height, or that the tasks were not sensitive enough.

Only minimal differences between individuals with congenital aphantasia and those with typical imagery on neuropsychological tasks that involve imagery