Quantifying aphantasia through drawing: Those without visual imagery show deficits in object but not spatial memory.

ABSTRACT: Congenital aphantasia is a recently characterized variation of experience defined by the inability to form voluntary visual imagery, in individuals who are otherwise high performing. Because of this specific deficit to visual imagery, individuals with aphantasia serve as an ideal group for probing the nature of representations in visual memory, particularly the interplay of object, spatial, and symbolic information. Here, we conducted a large-scale online study of aphantasia and revealed a dissociation in object and spatial content in their memory representations. Sixty-one individuals with aphantasia and matched controls with typical imagery studied real-world scene images, and were asked to draw them from memory, and then later copy them during a matched perceptual condition. Drawings we

SUBMITTER: Bainbridge WA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7856239 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature