When Memory Feels Vivid: Why the Moment Matters More Than the Trait

When researcher William Duckett was driving one day during his master's program, a question suddenly struck him: how do people who can't picture things remember things? Are there any differences?

In a recent interview with Tom Ebeyer from Aphantasia Network, the second-year PhD student at the University of Cambridge shared how this question led him down an unexpected path.

"It's something that's fairly recently within the past 10 years been looked into," Duckett explains. "And so I thought I'd join in on that and try and contribute a little bit and see how vividness relates to memory."

What he discovered challenges one of the most persistent assumptions in memory research—and offers surprising insights into why people with aphantasia can remember just as well as vivid visualizers, even when they report feeling like their memories are worse.

How People Remember Without Pictures

Here's what makes aphantasia so puzzling to people with typical imagery: when asked to remember something like their first car or their front door, typical visualizers will often say, "I vividly remember that. I can picture the color in my head."

"For people in the typical imagery group, they find it quite interesting to think how do you remember things if you don't see it?" Duckett says. "And then the converse, we have the aphantasics who find it really kind of difficult to imagine like a mental image of their first car."

Yet when researchers actually test memory performance, something remarkable happens.

"On the whole, no matter what memory task we throw at them, even if it's considered to be strictly mental, aphantasics are able to perform equally as well as individuals who report typical mental imagery," Duckett explains.

This holds true across a wide range of memory tasks—from memorizing lists to recalling complex visual information. The ability to visualize seems almost irrelevant to actual performance.

"Which again is really important because anecdotally and in some new research I'm doing, we find that aphantasics seem to believe that their memories are worse even though scientifically it seems as though there's no real difference."

The Problem With Measuring Vividness

The standard tool researchers have used for over 50 years is the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, or VVIQ. It asks people to rate how vividly they can imagine various scenarios—a rising sun, a familiar face, a storefront.

It's a trait measure: how vivid is your imagery in general?

And when researchers correlate VVIQ scores with memory performance, they find... nothing.

"We normally find that VVIQ isn't related to memory performance," Duckett explains. "So it doesn't matter if you score really highly on this questionnaire, your memory could be really great, it could be not so great."

In Duckett's research, when he plotted VVIQ scores against memory performance, the result was "more or less a straight line—you could be highly scoring on the VVIQ and you could be terrible at remembering things and vice versa."

Even when he created average vividness scores from people's ratings across multiple memories, the results were the same: "It was a little bit of a steeper line but it was basically no correlation going on there."

But Duckett suspected researchers were asking the wrong question.

State vs. Trait: The Moment-to-Moment Difference

Instead of asking how vivid people's imagery is in general, Duckett decided to ask something more specific: how vivid does this particular memory feel to you right now?

In his experiment, participants memorized objects placed in rooms or outdoor spaces. Later, they were shown the objects again—sometimes with visual changes, sometimes with spatial changes, sometimes unchanged.

Before identifying any changes, participants rated how vivid that specific memory felt in that moment.

"We found that on the—what we would call the state—so in that moment how that memory felt on that specific trial within the task, we found that their vividness rating did significantly relate to them subsequently getting it correct," Duckett says.

"So the more vivid people felt they remembered these objects, the more likely they were to have got things correct, which is a relatively new finding."

The difference is crucial: trait measures (how vivid is your imagery generally) don't predict memory accuracy. But state measures (how vivid does this specific memory feel right now) do.

"It seems like it's still this very specific within the moment of the specific object or factor or whatever else you're remembering," Duckett explains. "It is within that moment how vivid it feels to you seems to be important to then subsequently getting it correct."

What Does "Vivid" Even Mean?

This raises an important question: what exactly are people rating when they report vividness?

"We don't actually have an agreed upon definition of vividness," Duckett admits. "If you look in the dictionary, things will refer to like clear and bright, but that's sort of vivid in the sense of like colors and things like that, which may very well be what we constitute as vivid for some people."

But the meaning varies widely.

Some aphantasics Duckett has spoken with:

"define more a vivid memory as an emotional one. So, they can remember the emotions and then perhaps they're particularly excited or particularly sad, that's a more vivid memory to them than something sort of an everyday mundane experience."

Others describe vividness in terms of embodiment—"if you can feel all the senses back in the moment, it feels more vivid." A birthday party where you remember the sound of everyone around you, the smell of the candles, and the sight of the cake might feel more vivid than simply picturing your bedroom.

Even confidence might play a role.

"When I say I vividly remember doing something a week ago, could that also just mean I confidently remember doing something a week ago?" Duckett asks. "So that's something we also looked into and want to try and tease apart and see if there's a difference between the two."

This ambiguity isn't just academic—it's central to understanding what's happening when people rate their memories.

Memory Creates Imagery, Not the Other Way Around

So what's actually happening when someone reports a vivid memory?

Duckett has a hypothesis that flips conventional thinking on its head:

"It is not the image itself that is kind of necessary for memory, but memory would often create an image if you can see it."

Think about it this way:

"It's not that I hold the image of my first car in my mind and that creates the memory for me," he explains. "It's just more I think it's the other way. It is more I'm remembering I have a white car, my brain kind of just shows it to me."

"And so, it seems like perhaps maybe if there's a little bit of a disconnect between the brain showing at you, it doesn't matter because you've just remembered it anyway. You're just not seeing it."

The implication is profound: the visual image isn't the source of the memory—it's a byproduct. The underlying semantic and conceptual information is what matters, and that's accessible whether or not your brain generates a visual representation.

"I like the hypothesis because, well, one it fits into the aphantasia paradigm and it shows that the image itself isn't the source of the memory," Tom noted during the conversation. "It's not stored necessarily in that imagistic format. It's being generated based on underlying whatever semantic or conceptual knowledge."

This would explain why aphantasics can access the same information through different cognitive mechanisms—perhaps spatially, perhaps linguistically, but just as effectively.

The Differences That Do Exist

While performance on most memory tasks is equivalent, there are some interesting differences.

In certain visual tasks, like mental rotation—where you're shown an object and asked to identify what it would look like rotated 90 degrees—people with aphantasia "are still as accurate but slower," Duckett notes.

"So it indicates the sort of techniques and methods that they use within their minds. People with aphantasia slightly slower at that, but they're still as accurate. So whatever technique that is is kind of a little bit different."

Autobiographical memory shows some variation too.

"People with aphantasia tend to sometimes have fewer details or miss tiny certain little bits," Duckett says. But he's quick to add: "This again might not necessarily be the fact that they don't remember it. They just when they talk about it and represent it and write them down they just don't include it as much."

It's possible the details are there—they're just harder to articulate without the scaffolding of visual imagery to reference.

"It's like the image is almost like a reference," Tom suggested. "It adds like these additional details that maybe would take time to conceptualize that don't come out in like the flow of a conversation."

"Exactly," Duckett agreed.

Different Strategies, Same Results

The research suggests people with aphantasia use genuinely different cognitive strategies to accomplish the same tasks.

"Whatever strategy they are using to remember things is sufficient enough to be kind of almost blend in with people who report using visual methods," Duckett explains.

Some research suggests people who are less vivid might be better at remembering spatial information—where something was in a room versus what it looked like.

"The jury is still out on that one as again we need more and more research on this kind of thing," Duckett cautions. "But it could say that there's cognitive mechanisms that people who don't use their images kind of help them in a different way."

Many aphantasics report their memories are more linguistic—"like stage directions," as Duckett describes it.

When I tried to explain my own experience, I used a phrase from a community member: "a dispassionate reporter talking about the things that I've done in my life" Tom adds.

"I've had this conversation a few times trying to think about how I would express or experience my memories if I didn't learn a language... It seems like if I didn't have the language but I had images I could still experience them with visuals, but for me it's like telling the story using the language is what makes the memory real. It's what turns it from just in the ether in my mind to something that can be as close to I can experience it."

The Subjective Experience Gap

Perhaps the most important finding in Duckett's research isn't about objective performance—it's about subjective experience.

"What is it like to experience memories across this kind of spectrum?" he asks. "I think that's a really important thing that kind of gets overlooked quite a lot because we just usually look at like correct or incorrect."

His current research allows people to type free-form answers about what their memories feel like—when they seem vivid versus not, how a memory subjectively feels to them.

"Just from eyeballing it, most people, the aphantasics we've looked at said that they on average believe that their memory is worse than the average person," Duckett reveals. "Now again I can't look at the data just yet but I would assume like we found before there's going to be no differences."

He also asks participants if they would like to be able to see mental images if given the option.

"A lot of times people mention things exactly you just said—that it would be great to be able to see a loved one or see their favorite childhood toy or place or something like that. It would be that subjective experience, even though the objective sort of the cold thing of like yes I got it incorrect or incorrect, the subjective, the feeling of the emotions and everything else would just be sort of amplified by being able to visually see it."

This disconnect between objective performance and subjective experience is crucial. People with aphantasia can remember just as accurately, but the experience of remembering feels different—and often feels worse.

What Vivid Imagery Doesn't Guarantee

One of the most counterintuitive findings from this line of research: vivid imagery doesn't guarantee accurate memory.

"If that line is flat and the vividness doesn't impact the scores on the memories, that means that people can be having vivid images but those images aren't any more accurate," Tom noted. "What's that experience like? What's the quality or content of these images if they're not actually increasing the accuracy?"

It's a fascinating question. People with hyperphantasia—extremely vivid mental imagery—don't necessarily have better memory than anyone else. They just have a more vivid experience of it.

This raises intriguing questions about false memories.

"It would be something that would be great to manipulate," Duckett muses. "To get people to remember something, see it in their mind, both think it's really vivid, and they're confident that they're correct—turns out it's not correct—would be a great way to look into it."

While he's not aware of research showing whether aphantasia protects from false memories, his hunch is "there wouldn't be a difference."

"If we flip it around that would also be really interesting," he adds—studying cases where there's vivid imagery but low correctness. "What's driving that?"

The VVIQ Problem

The findings have important implications for how researchers should study mental imagery going forward.

"I think the VVIQ is great and has been used for 50 years and such, but it is again a general thing and the questions it asks and the themes it touches upon may not necessarily relate to memory directly," Duckett explains.

One question asks about imagining a rising sun—but that "may not necessarily touch on and tease apart what we look for in memory."

Even when he averaged people's vividness ratings across specific memories, he found nothing. "So it seems like it's still this very specific within the moment of the specific object or factor or whatever else you're remembering."

The variability matters too. Even within the VVIQ itself:

"the first question I think asks about I remember a familiar face. Now you could have chosen your partner that you saw that morning or you could have chosen your mom who lives on the other side of the country who I haven't seen in 6 months. So even then it can still kind of be influenced by those kinds of factors."

The takeaway: researchers need to move beyond trait measures and start analyzing vividness moment-by-moment, memory-by-memory.

Why Memories Feel Different

Understanding memory in aphantasia requires understanding that there are different types of memory working together.

Procedural memory: Your memory for physical actions, like riding a bike.

Episodic memory: Memory for specific episodes or scenes from your life—your autobiographical experiences.

Semantic memory: Factual knowledge, like knowing Paris is the capital of France.

For aphantasics, the differences emerge most clearly in episodic and autobiographical memory—the personal narrative of your life.

"That's where we kind of tend to find some differences," Duckett notes. "A lot of studies have looked into getting people to describe their autobiographical memories and then scoring them on sort of detail and aspects and things like that and find that aphantasics on the whole are perhaps less detailed in their recall."

But again, he emphasizes:

"This might not necessarily be the fact that they don't remember it. They just when they talk about it and represent it and write them down they just don't include it as much."

The information might be there—it's the expression that differs.

Beyond Vision: The Full Sensory Spectrum

While most research focuses on visual memory, Duckett is careful to note that memory can involve all the senses.

"There's also a lot of research going into sound, like music and things like that, about people's memory for music," he explains. "People who can't picture music in their mind or sounds or don't have an internal monologue, are there any differences? And there's also more exciting research there."

This multisensory aspect adds another layer to understanding vividness. If someone can't visualize but has rich auditory imagery, does their sense of memory vividness draw from sound instead? Do different modalities contribute differently to that subjective sense of a "vivid" memory?

These questions remain open.

The Emotional Salience Connection

One audience member asked whether the vividness of an experience relates to the likelihood of retaining the autobiographical memory.

Duckett's answer was nuanced: "Based upon the controlled laboratory experiment, it would seem that the vividness of your event doesn't necessarily matter."

But—and this is important—"the vividness and emotionality behind a memory is what forces you to remember it."

You won't remember a mundane drive to work you've done hundreds of times.

"But if it's something particularly salient—so if you were happening to go and somebody else fell off their bike and you saw it out the window, you probably remember that because it's got kind of emotional and a bit more vivid and salient."

The causation runs in reverse:

"It's perhaps not vividness is making you remember it, you remember it and it feels more vivid. Because it stands out from the rest of the memories, there's something more salient about it and because of that it'll then be more vivid."

This fits with the hypothesis that memory creates imagery, not the other way around. The emotional salience creates the strong memory, which then generates a more vivid image for those who can visualize.

What's Next

Duckett is currently running experiments specifically with aphantasics to gather qualitative data about what memory feels like without visualization.

His lab is also part of a larger project called "When Memories Come Alive," examining vividness across the general population from multiple angles—history, literature, and psychology.

They're running a survey asking people what vividness means to them. "From that, hopefully they can boil it down and see what everyone says and come up with one sort of definition," Duckett explains.

The goal is ambitious but necessary: establish a clear, agreed-upon definition of what "vivid" actually means in the context of memory and imagery research.

Looking Forward

The field of aphantasia and memory research is still young, with fundamental questions remaining unanswered.

Duckett's work represents an important shift: from asking whether aphantasics can remember to asking how they experience remembering—and recognizing that those are two very different questions.

"Memory is fantastic in that we can test a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of stuff to test," he says with characteristic enthusiasm.

As research moves forward, the focus on state-level measures rather than trait-level measures could unlock new understanding not just of aphantasia, but of how memory and imagery relate in everyone.

The next time someone asks you to rate how vivid your imagery is, maybe the real question should be: how vivid does this specific memory feel to you right now?

That small shift in perspective—from the general to the specific, from the trait to the state—might be the key to finally understanding one of the most persistent puzzles in cognitive science.

Learn more: William Duckett is a second-year PhD student in the Memory Lab at the University of Cambridge, where he studies the subjective experience of memory and its relationship to mental imagery across the lifespan. His pre-print on state versus trait vividness measures is currently under review.