Abstract
Visual mental imagery, or the ability to see with the mind’s eye, varies between individuals. The vividness of a mental image ranges from aphantasics who experience no mental image at all, to hyperphantasics who experience extremely vivid and clear mental imagery. The present study aims to investigate the possible connection between the vividness of visual mental imagery and precision of information retrieved from visual memory. We predicted that individuals who experience weak or no mental imagery are poorer at retrieving information with great details from memory, such as the color of objects, than those experiencing strong and vivid mental imagery. This was tested in three experiments: a visual perception task, a visual working memory task, and a visual long-term memory task. In addition, participants were asked to complete a questionnaire used to measure the vividness of mental imagery. The perception task served as a control task where two identical objects were presented simultaneously, a colored sample object and a grayscale test object. In the working memory and long-term memory tasks, a delay was added between the presentation of colored sample objects and grayscale test objects. A color-wheel was located around the grayscale test object and was activated by moving the mouse. Participants were asked to adjust the color-wheel until the test object’s color matched that of the corresponding sample object. Our findings indicate no association between mental imagery vividness and memory precision. Possible explanations for this lack of an association are discussed.