Research library
Papers about aphantasia and mental imagery, with summaries in plain words. The summaries are generated by AI and may contain errors.
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Azañón and colleagues · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Researchers found no evidence that mental imagery vividness correlates with performance on a word-color interference task. This suggests that subjective imagery strength may not directly influence low-level perceptual processing or interference.
Mawtus and colleagues · Collabra: Psychology
Among people reporting a mental health condition, fewer with aphantasia than imagers reported intrusive sensory symptoms (31% vs 74%), and they found visual imagery in therapy less helpful. The authors urge adapting techniques to the person.
Reeder and colleagues · Cognition
Aphantasics performed as well as typical imagers on a precise visual working memory task by using non-visual spatial and sensorimotor strategies. This demonstrates that mental imagery is not required for maintaining high-fidelity visual information.
Königsmark, Bergmann and Reeder · Cortex
People with aphantasia are significantly less likely to experience vivid or complex pseudo-hallucinations during rhythmic flicker stimulation. This suggests that the ability to generate voluntary mental imagery increases susceptibility to anomalous perceptual experiences.
Salge, Pollmann and Reeder · Psychological Research
Researchers found that higher visual imagery vividness correlates with increased pareidolia proneness in both static and dynamic noise. This suggests that vivid mental imagery can lead to more frequent misperceptions of reality.
Reeder · Vision Research
Researchers found that individual differences in imagery vividness, precision, and expertise significantly shape the content of mental representations. This highlights the need to account for personal variation in vision research.