Learning

Aphantasia can shape how people learn, but not whether they can. Many develop alternative strategies, from verbal notes to hands-on practice.

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Research

2026

The role of load reduction instruction in assisting students with weak mental imagery

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.

2026

Do low imagers know more words? examining the association between mental imagery and vocabulary size

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.

2025

The relationship between multilingualism and visual imagery: Investigating aphantasia using the VVIQ

Li and Guan · Journal of Emerging Investigators

In an online survey of 302 Canadian students aged 16 to 18, those who said they were fluent in two or more languages rated their visual imagery as more vivid, on average, than those fluent in one. Ten students reported very weak or no imagery, and eight of them spoke one language. A one-time survey with self-rated fluency cannot show that languages change imagery, and the paper's figure that languages explain 97% of the differences in scores came from five group averages, one of them a single person.

2022

Memory deficits in aphantasics are not restricted to autobiographical memory – Perspectives from the Dual Coding Approach

Monzel, Vetterlein and Reuter · Journal of Neuropsychology

In an online study, 67 people with aphantasia and 32 people with more imagery, grouped by an imagery questionnaire, did four timed memory tasks: recalling spoken words, redrawing seven lines they had just seen, recognizing the earlier words in a longer list, and picking out and completing complex shapes seen earlier. The aphantasia group scored lower on average, by a small to moderate margin, and the gap did not differ reliably between tasks. The authors suggest imagery supports memory even for words, but the study was not preregistered and they note that missing imagery may not be the direct cause.

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‘That’s Not How I Pictured It’ – Why Book‑to‑Film Adaptations So Often Disappoint

Vision Without Seeing (Part II): Did Ronald Reagan Have Aphantasia?

Decoding Without Pictures - Aphantasia and Literacy in the AI Era

Discovering Aphantasia in History

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When Mental Images Get in the Way: How Aphantasia Reveals a Hidden Advantage in Reasoning

Are People with Aphantasia Verbal Thinkers?

Research

The role of load reduction instruction in assisting students with weak mental imagery

Do low imagers know more words? examining the association between mental imagery and vocabulary size

The relationship between multilingualism and visual imagery: Investigating aphantasia using the VVIQ

Memory deficits in aphantasics are not restricted to autobiographical memory – Perspectives from the Dual Coding Approach

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