Research library
Papers about aphantasia and mental imagery, with summaries in plain words. The summaries are generated by AI and may contain errors.
Balaban and Ullman · Trends in Cognitive Sciences
This short letter replies to a proposal that visual imagery, which it treats as the mind's "graphical rendering", plays a central role in social life. It agrees imagery may matter socially but doubts a direct link. Instead it suggests an indirect one: pictures, seen or imagined, may stir old emotional systems that words cannot trigger, which could explain why people with aphantasia react less to written descriptions of distressing events. It still argues that rendering is probably not crucial and that much of imagination's work is done by simulating how things physically behave rather than by making pictures.
Rhodes and colleagues · Journal of Applied Sport Psychology
Athletes with low imagery ability significantly improved their multisensory vividness following a functional imagery training intervention. This demonstrates that imagery skills are malleable and can be enhanced through targeted practice.
Andrade and colleagues · British Journal of Psychology
A new questionnaire on imagery in seven senses found a separate vividness factor for each sense rather than one general factor, though the senses correlate. Relative to their own average, most people were stronger in some senses than others.
Want to take part? See the studies you can join.
Running a study? We can help you recruit participants.