Hypophantasia is low, but not absent, visual imagery: flashes or fragments rather than a clear picture. Hypo means low. It can extend to other senses too.
Martin and colleagues · Learning and Individual Differences
Among 1,451 high school students, weaker imagery went with lower science scores, a gap that was smaller where students said teachers reduced mental load. The authors suggest such teaching may help weak imagers, but the data cannot show cause.
Duckett and Simons · Neuropsychologia
In 60 adults, neither questionnaire imagery scores nor average vividness predicted memory for scenes, but memories rated more vivid than a person's own average were more often correct. Re-analyzed aphantasia data showed the same trial-level link.
Schwarzkopf and colleagues · Royal Society Open Science
Vividness ratings robustly capture a wide range of subjective experiences, from internal mental depictions to externally projected imagery. This suggests aphantasia should be redefined to distinguish between faint imagery and a total lack of pictorial representation.
Lebron Flores and Moacdieh · International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation
Students shown an AI-generated website before designing their own rated the experience lower, and for them imagery vividness did not predict how they felt about it. The authors say AI inspiration should be used with caution.
Yavuz and Nazir · Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
In 158 English-speaking adults, how vividly people said they could picture things was not linked to the size of their vocabulary overall. Word by word, people with more vivid imagery did slightly worse on the most concrete words, such as tweezers or octopus, and in an exploratory comparison the 24 people with the weakest imagery scored higher than the 24 with the most vivid, about 82 against 76 out of 100. The authors suggest people with weak imagery may lean on word-based definitions, and call the findings provisional until they are repeated.
Chen and colleagues · Empirical Studies of the Arts
In a preregistered study, 45 Chinese university students viewed paintings in a virtual reality museum, sometimes told to imagine being inside each painting with as many senses as possible and sometimes told simply to appreciate them without imagining. Imagining with several senses made paintings feel more vivid, more arousing and more appealing, and students with stronger imagery across the senses rated paintings as more vivid and appealing overall. Vividness statistically accounted for both links with appeal, and arousal also did for the instruction. The authors suggest multisensory imagery practice could become part of art education.
Wang and colleagues · Proceedings of the SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 Posters
A VR system using guided imagery and spatial tasks significantly improved imagery clarity and recall in people with imagery deficits. This suggests that leveraging preserved spatial cognition can help rebuild visual imagery pathways.
Monzel, Nagai and Silvanto · Scientific Reports
People with aphantasia report significantly lower interceptive awareness and emotional engagement with bodily signals. This suggests that mental imagery plays a key role in linking internal bodily states to the recall of personal memories.
Nanay · Neuropsychologia
Aphantasia is not a monolithic condition but a heterogeneous spectrum with diverse underlying causes. Recognizing this complexity helps researchers better understand the interpersonal differences in imagery vividness across the entire population.
Scholz, Monzel and Liu · Current Biology
Neural activity in aphantasia during imagery tasks lacks the perception-like representational overlap found in typical imagers. This suggests that neural activity in aphantasics reflects alternative non-perceptual strategies rather than unconscious mental imagery.
Marks · Vision
Researchers synthesized historical and contemporary data to create a 16-descriptor template for visual mental imagery. This provides a normative standard to better understand individual differences in imagery vividness and clinical conditions.
Pearson, Rademaker and Tong · Psychological Science
Subjective vividness ratings reliably predict an image's impact on subsequent perception. This suggests that individuals have accurate metacognitive insight into the sensory strength of their mental imagery.