Francis Galton’s Breakfast Study
Think of your breakfast table, the one you sat down at this morning. Consider carefully the mental picture that comes to your mind’s eye.
Is the image of the table dim or reasonably vivid? Life-like? Or did you think we were speaking metaphorically?
Some of us can readily conjure images in our mind’s eye, but for approximately 1-4% of the global population, there are no mental images at all. This remarkable discovery stems from Francis Galton’s pioneering Breakfast Study, conducted in 1880.
Who Was Francis Galton?
Francis Galton (1822-1911) was a British polymath, statistician, and psychologist who made groundbreaking contributions to multiple fields of study. A cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton was a pioneer in human intelligence studies and statistical analysis. He is credited with developing the concept of correlation in statistics and was instrumental in advancing the field of psychometrics—the measurement of psychological traits.
Francis Galton’s work extended beyond psychology into meteorology, anthropology, and genetics. He founded the field of eugenics (though this aspect of his work is now considered scientifically invalid and ethically problematic). However, his contributions to understanding individual differences in human cognition, particularly through the Breakfast Study, remain foundational to modern psychology and neuroscience.
Galton was knighted in 1909 for his scientific contributions and was a fellow of the Royal Society. His innovative approach to studying mental imagery through the Breakfast Study established him as a pioneer in experimental psychology, decades before the field was formally established.
The Breakfast Study: Methods and Findings
Francis Galton’s Breakfast Study was revolutionary in its approach to investigating mental imagery. Conducted in 1880, this study asked participants to imagine their breakfast table from that morning and provide detailed ratings about their visualization experience.
The Breakfast Study methodology involved asking participants to rate three specific aspects of their mental imagery:
- Illumination: How bright or dim was the imagined breakfast table?
- Definition: How clear or blurry were the details of the objects on the table?
- Colouring: How vivid were the colors in the mental image?
Francis Galton collected responses from a diverse group of participants, including scientists, artists, and members of the general public. The Breakfast Study results revealed an extraordinary range of visualization abilities that had never been systematically documented before.
Most Breakfast Study participants reported some capacity to visualize in their mind’s eye, though their experiences varied dramatically. The study’s findings challenged the assumption that everyone experiences mental imagery in similar ways.
Galton’s Observations on Non-Imagers
Francis Galton’s most surprising discovery in the Breakfast Study was the existence of what he termed “non-imagers”—individuals who reported no visual imagery whatsoever. These participants described their mental experience in strikingly different terms from typical visualizers.
One notable non-imager from the Breakfast Study explained:
It is only by a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection of a scene as a ‘mental image’ which I can ‘see’ with my ‘mind’s eye’.
~ Aphantasic participant from Galton’s 1880 study
Galton observed that these non-imagers were often highly intelligent and successful individuals, particularly among scientists and mathematicians. This finding challenged prevailing assumptions about the relationship between visualization ability and cognitive performance.
The Breakfast Study revealed that non-imagers had developed alternative cognitive strategies for memory, problem-solving, and spatial reasoning. Francis Galton noted that these individuals often relied more heavily on logical, analytical thinking processes rather than visual-spatial processing.
Galton’s observations about non-imagers in the Breakfast Study were particularly significant because they suggested that the absence of visual imagery was not a deficit but simply a different way of experiencing and processing information. This insight was far ahead of its time and wouldn’t be fully appreciated until the modern study of aphantasia began in the 21st century.
Brief History of Visual Imagery Research
The Breakfast Study marked the beginning of systematic research into individual differences in mental imagery. Francis Galton’s work demonstrated that visualization abilities exist on a spectrum, with some individuals experiencing extremely vivid mental images while others experience none at all.
In extreme imagery cases revealed by the Breakfast Study, some participants reported above-average abilities for visualization:
Thinking of the breakfast table this morning, all the objects in my mental picture are as bright as the actual scene.
~ Hyperphantsic participant from Galton’s 1880 study
As the Breakfast Study demonstrates, remarkable, often unsuspected, invisible differences exist in our imaginative experiences ranging from aphantasia (complete absence) to hyperphantasia (an abundance of visual imagination). This fact surprised those who encountered it for more than a century after Francis Galton’s initial findings.
Unfortunately, this phenomenon remained largely unexamined until British scientist David Marks developed the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) in 1973 during his research on human consciousness, building directly on the foundation laid by Francis Galton’s Breakfast Study.
Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ)
VVIQ is a proven assessment for measuring individual differences in visual imagination. This visual imagery test consists of four scenarios and asks you to rank how vividly you can visualize them in your mind’s eye on a scale of one to five.
There are four groups of four questions. Each group asks you to picture a particular scenario, like the face of a loved one, your favourite shop, or a beautiful landscape and asks you to rate the vividness of the details within each scene.
Since VVIQ was first published, it has been referenced in over 1200 studies on mental imagery. It has been given considerable attention in the domains of psychology, philosophy, and, more recently, cognitive neuroscience.
In 1995, psychologist Stuart Mckelvie published a second version, VVIQ2. Both instruments are considered reliable measures for identifying individual differences in visual imagery and are proven to be accurate measures of the intensity with which individuals can visualize settings, people, and objects in their mind’s eye.
But what if you can’t visualize at all, like the non-imagers Francis Galton discovered in his Breakfast Study?
VVIQ and Aphantasia
When it came to visualizing things in the mind’s eye, people were either classified as ‘good visual imagers’ or ‘poor visual imagers’ —categories that echoed Francis Galton’s Breakfast Study findings.
That changed in 2015 when Professor Adam Zeman received a patient known as patient MX, who reported losing his ability to visualize after undergoing surgery and suffering a minor stroke. Zeman later named the phenomenon aphantasia, finally giving a scientific term to the non-imagers that Francis Galton had first identified in his Breakfast Study over a century earlier.
Visual imagery tests like VVIQ are now often used as an initial assessment to identify aphantasics, or people with aphantasia —the modern term for the non-imagers Francis Galton discovered.
A low score on VVIQ or a high score on the VVIQ2 (since the scale is flipped) may be characteristic of hypophantasia or ‘low vividness,’ or, in rare cases, aphantasia or ‘non-visualizer.’
Reliability of VVIQ Results
It’s no secret that our conscious thoughts are private and that evaluating the vividness of our own internally generated experiences – such as those assessed in VVIQ – can understandably raise some questions about the reliability and accuracy of results.
On the one hand, it can be challenging to determine the precise details of the mental images in our mind’s eye and even sometimes tell whether we have formed a mental picture at all.
Some people will find it hard to classify the vividness of their mental pictures when there’s nothing to use as a reference point.
How can we possibly know to what extent our mental pictures are accurate, detailed, and vivid if we cannot compare them to someone else’s experience?
VVIQ asks you to compare the image in your head with how you know it looks in real life to reconcile this somewhat. Is the scenario you’re visualizing equally vivid to its real-world counterpart, a little less vivid, not vivid at all, or completely non-existent?
Still, comparing the real world with the subjective one inside our heads is challenging. The real challenge is: How well do you know your thoughts?
As it turns out, you may know your thoughts much better than you think you do!
Metacognition and the Mind’s Eye
Research has provided a growing body of behavioural and neuroimaging evidence that would suggest we have a pretty good understanding of our thoughts when it comes to mental imagery—validating the self-report methodology Francis Galton used in his Breakfast Study.
A study led by cognitive scientist and mental imagery expert Joel Pearson found that subjective reporting of imagery vividness was highly predictive of the efficacy of the individual’s imagery experience when compared with results from more objective measures.
Participants in the study completed VVIQ2 and subsequently were tested using a behavioural experiment called binocular rivalry, which provides a more objective evaluation of mental imagery. Their results indicated that participants not only had good metacognitive knowledge of their overall imagery ability but that they could also evaluate the vividness of individual episodes of imagery, such as those present in VVIQ2 (Pearson et al., 2019).
So despite the highly subjective nature of visual imagery tests like VVIQ and Francis Galton’s original Breakfast Study, these findings conclude that we can reasonably rely on our self-reported evaluations of the vividness of our mind’s eye or lack thereof.
Accounting for Biased Brains
It’s worth noting that any self-reporting test will always be subject to human bias. We all have biased brains. One bias that could impact the results of your VVIQ test is that you might be more likely to subconsciously (or consciously) choose answers that will give you the result you want.
For example, if you already believe you have aphantasia after seeing the apple test on social media, you might be more inclined to answer 0 for every scenario on VVIQ. What is more, the results could be impacted by how you feel when you complete the test.
To reduce bias in self-reporting, make sure to approach the process in a clear-headed, rational way. Eliminate any distractions that might prevent you from thinking clearly. If you feel your emotion might be getting in the way, try retaking the test later and comparing the results.
You may find after taking the quiz that you are more biased about your visualization skills based on the results you get. For these reasons and more, VVIQ is only recommended as an initial evaluation of aphantasia. It is not a conclusive diagnosis of whether you have aphantasia or not.
Beyond Visual Imagery: The Imagination Spectrum
Finally, it’s important to note that VVIQ only measures the vividness of your visual imagery—similar to how Francis Galton’s Breakfast Study focused primarily on visual aspects of mental imagery. There are other sense modalities to consider when evaluating your mental imagery experience.
When you think of your favorite breakfast food, can you smell or taste it in your mind?
These sensory experiences are called olfactory and gustatory imagery. And yes, some people can actually “smell” pancakes in their minds!
Imagination is multisensory; each “sense” is a spectrum ranging from completely absent to abundant mental imagery and everything in between—a concept that extends Francis Galton’s original Breakfast Study findings into all sensory modalities.
So, while the VVIQ can provide some helpful insight into your visual imagination, it’s important to remember that it’s just one aspect of a much larger Imagination Profile, building on the foundation that Francis Galton established with his pioneering Breakfast Study.
Take the Imagination Spectrum to discover your Imagery Profile and explore the full sensory spectrum of your imagination.
