A group including professor Adam Zeman of Exeter University has published a new paper on aphantasia and hyperphantasia with some interesting results. The paper is titled Phantasia – The psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes and is based on data from 2,400 participants.
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
Read the full paper here.