Aphantasia and Memory Confidence: You Know More Than You Think

Decreased Associative Processing and Memory Confidence in Aphantasia

Bianca C. Wittmann and Yılmaz Şatırer, Learning & Memory, 2022

The Question

When people with aphantasia remember something, do they actually remember it less accurately? Or does something else change? This study tested whether absent visual imagery affects how well people form and retrieve associations in memory, and whether it affects how confident they feel about what they remember.

The Discovery

Ninety-six adults completed an online memory task. Fifty-five had aphantasia, 41 were controls. Before any memory test happened, participants simply looked at paired images or listened to music clips paired with images and decided whether the two things "matched." Nobody told them what counted as a match, and nobody told them their memory would be tested afterward. The pairings were not obvious. Hearing Irish folk music alongside a picture of an umbrella, for example. Making that connection required bridging two things that don't naturally go together. The pairings were not obvious, so participants had to decide whether two things belonged together without being given a rule for what counted as a match. Aphantasic participants made that kind of associative link less often, p = 0.023 Why is not fully clear. The researchers suggested imagery may play a role, but the study did not establish what process was actually driving the difference. 

When it came to the actual memory test, the groups performed about the same. Aphantasic participants retrieved the correct answer just as often as controls across all three tasks: which item they had seen, where it appeared on the screen, and what color or feature it had.

What differed was confidence. Aphantasic participants gave significantly fewer high-confidence responses to correct answers across all three tasks, p=0.009. The biggest gap appeared in memory for visual features like color and material, p=0.001. They got the right answer. They just did not feel sure about it.

The Catch

Participants were classified as aphantasic based solely on self-reported VVIQ scores, with no behavioral check. The aphantasic group also reported substantially lower auditory imagery, so the effects may reflect reduced multi-sensory imagery broadly rather than absent visual imagery specifically. Participants were partly recruited through aphantasia online communities, which tend to draw people who are already aware of and engaged with their condition. That group may not represent people with aphantasia who have never heard the term.

The Insight

In this study, aphantasia did not reduce correct answers, but it was linked to lower confidence in those answers. That suggests the memory can be there even when it does not feel as solid or vivid. 

The One Thing to Remember

A student or person with aphantasia who says "I'm not sure" or "I don't really remember" may be right about the facts and wrong about their confidence. If you hear someone with aphantasia dismiss their own memory, it is worth asking what they actually recall before assuming it is gone. They may know more than they think. A teacher or parent who responds to "I don't know" by simply restating the information may be skipping past an answer that was already there.

The Connection

The guide describes a student who knows the information but cannot access it the way the task demands. This study adds a layer to that picture. The barrier is not always retrieval failure. Sometimes it is retrieval without the sense of certainty that usually accompanies it. A student who keeps saying "I think so, but I'm not sure" may be describing exactly what this research found, not doubt about the facts, but the absence of the vivid feeling that normally signals a memory is solid.

The Source

You can read the full paper by clicking here.