Mental Imagery abilities affect visual working memory performance: evidence from aphantasic participants.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychology

Background:

• Visual imagery involves creating mental visual representations.
• Visual working memory retains visual information without external input.
• Aphantasia is the inability to voluntarily create visual imagery.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if aphantasia affects visual working memory.
• To determine if non-visual strategies compensate for imagery deficits.
• To examine the role of visual imagery in working memory across different stimuli.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted with aphantasic and control participants.
• Participants performed change localization tasks with visual stimuli (colors, fractals, words, pseudowords).
• Visual imagery ability was assessed using the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ).

Main Results:

• Aphantasic participants showed significantly impaired visual working memory compared to controls.
• Impairment was consistent across easily verbalizable (colors, words) and non-verbalizable stimuli (fractals, pseudowords).
• Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire scores predicted working memory performance across all stimulus types.

Conclusions:

• Visual imagery plays a critical role in supporting visual working memory.
• Aphantasia leads to deficits in visual working memory, irrespective of stimulus verbalizability.
• Individual differences in visual imagery ability are significant predictors of working memory performance.