Aphantasia can shape how people learn, but not whether they can. Many develop alternative strategies, from verbal notes to hands-on practice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Suggate and Martzog · Developmental Science
In 266 German children aged 3 to 9, tested twice about 10 months apart, more daily screen time at the first test predicted slightly lower later accuracy on questions comparing two named objects (which is shinier, a trumpet or a violin?), after allowing for age, vocabulary, working memory and family background. Earlier task scores did not predict later screen time, and screen time did not predict answer speed. Television and interactive screens showed similar links. The authors suggest ready-made screen images give children less practice at making their own, though other factors could explain the link.
Sadoski · Reading & Writing Quarterly
This review applies dual coding theory, the idea that we think in two linked codes, one of words and one of mental images, to how children and adults learn vocabulary. It reports that concrete, easily pictured words are learned faster than abstract ones, and that self-made drawings, illustrations and the keyword method, which links a new word to a sound-alike word in one image, help people learn meanings. Verbal methods such as word-part analysis also help. The review argues that the theory can account for why these methods work, but it does not consider people who cannot form images.