Abstract
Auditory and visual imagery were studied in a sample of 128 participants, including 34 self-reported aphantasics. Auditory imagery (Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale-Vividness, BAIS-V) and visual imagery (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire-Modified, VVIQ-M) were strongly associated, Spearman's rho = 0.83: Most self-reported aphantasics also reported weak or entirely absent auditory imagery; and participants lacking auditory imagery tended to be aphantasic. Similarly, vivid visual imagery tended to co-occur with vivid auditory imagery. Nevertheless, the aphantasic group included one individual with typical auditory imagery; and the group lacking auditory imagery (N = 29) included one individual with typical visual imagery. Hence, weak visual and auditory imagery can dissociate, albeit with low apparent incidence. Auditory representations and auditory imagery are thought to play a key role in a wide range of psychological domains, including working memory and memory rehearsal, prospective cognition, thinking, reading, planning, problem-solving, self-regulation, and music. Therefore, self-reports describing an absence of auditory imagery raise a host of important questions concerning the role of phenomenal auditory imagery in these domains. Because there is currently no English word denoting an absence of auditory imagery, we propose a new term, anauralia, for referring to this, and offer suggestions for further research.
Highlights
Interest in the once controversial topic of mental imagery (Pylyshyn, 2002), and its relation with other aspects of psychological functioning has revived in recent years, following a series of papers describing individuals who apparently have no experience of imagery, or more accurately no experience of visual sensory imagery (Zeman et al, 2010, 2015, 2020; Dawes et al, 2020)
Just as the literature on mental imagery generally has been dominated by work on visual imagery (Pearson, 2019), descriptions and investigations of aphantasia have tended to focus on visual representations and visual imagery
Both personal accounts (Faw, 2009; Kendle, 2017; Watkins, 2018) and survey studies (Dawes et al, 2020; Zeman et al, 2020) have shown that at least some aphantasics report an inner mental life that is “blind” (Keogh and Pearson, 2018), and completely silent. These individuals report a complete absence of auditory as well as visual imagery: “I just don’t have an inner voice that speaks to me or which I can listen to talking”— Kendle (2017, p. 14); “I silently think and silently read”—Faw (2009, p. 46); “I don’t have the experience people describe of hearing a tune or a voice in their heads”— Watkins (2018, p. 44); “I refer to my experience as “Like Helen Keller in my head
Summary
Interest in the once controversial topic of mental imagery (Pylyshyn, 2002), and its relation with other aspects of psychological functioning has revived in recent years, following a series of papers describing individuals who apparently have no experience of imagery, or more accurately no experience of visual sensory imagery (Zeman et al, 2010, 2015, 2020; Dawes et al, 2020). Just as the literature on mental imagery generally has been dominated by work on visual imagery (Pearson, 2019), descriptions and investigations of aphantasia have tended to focus on visual representations and visual imagery Both personal accounts (Faw, 2009; Kendle, 2017; Watkins, 2018) and survey studies (Dawes et al, 2020; Zeman et al, 2020) have shown that at least some aphantasics report an inner mental life that is “blind” (Keogh and Pearson, 2018), and completely silent. In this paper, we report a preliminary investigation of auditory imagery and anauralia and their associations with visual imagery and aphantasia
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