The Role of Visual Imagery in Story Reading: Evidence from Aphantasia

Speed, Eekhof & Mak — Consciousness and Cognition, 2024

This study asked a simple question. Does not having a visual mind's eye change how you experience a story? Researchers had 47 people with aphantasia and 51 controls read the same short story, then measured how engaged, absorbed, and emotionally moved they were.

Worth knowing before you read the results. The participants with aphantasia were recruited through Facebook and Reddit aphantasia communities, with an average age of 43. These are not a random cross-section of people with aphantasia. They are adults who already know they have it, sought out others like them, and have likely spent real time understanding how their brain works. That matters when you get to the finding that they read just as many books as the control group. It may say less about people with aphantasia in general and more about people with aphantasia who have already figured themselves out. Please keep in mind those are my thoughts, not the researchers.

Back to what the researchers found...The experience was different, but not in the way you might expect. People with aphantasia were less absorbed, less emotionally engaged with the characters, less likely to find it suspenseful. But they liked the story just as much. Same number of books per year. Same genre preferences. What they gravitated toward was plot. The story's structure rather than its atmosphere.

If you remember one thing — People with aphantasia aren't less interested in stories. They're getting something real out of reading, just through a different route.

If you have read No Picture Needed, here is the connection to the paper...

This study is a laboratory version of something the guide describes. Remember the reading comprehension section? The same student who aces the vocabulary test struggles on the comprehension questions about the same chapter. That pattern shows up here. The aphantasic readers understood the story fine. They just experienced it differently, tracking plot and facts while the scenery and emotional atmosphere stayed flat.

The photo album vs. filing cabinet framing fits this research directly. The control readers experienced the story like a film. The readers with aphantasia experienced it like a well-organized set of facts about what happened. Same story. Same comprehension. Completely different ride.

The guide argues that aphantasia doesn't remove the love of stories, just changes the route to them. This study backs that up. People with aphantasia read just as much fiction and enjoy it just as much. Plot, structure, language, ideas. Not "picture the setting."