The Eye’s Mind’s latest paper Phantasia – The psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes is in press with the journal Cortex. With findings based on data from 2400 participants, the paper is the first major scientific output made possible by the wide public interest in imagery extremes.
Key findings:
- aphantasia is associated with scientific and mathematical occupations, hyperphantasia is associated with ‘creative’ professions
- participants with aphantasia report an elevated rate of difficulty with face recognition and autobiographical memory, participants with hyperphantasia report an elevated rate of synaesthesia
- around half those with aphantasia describe an absence of wakeful imagery in all sense modalities, while a majority dream visually
- aphantasia appears to run within families more often than would be expected by chance
Access the paper here