Abstract
From reaching for a glass of water to driving a car, interactions with the physical world are ubiquitous in our lived experience. To plan our actions, we must anticipate how objects will behave as they interact under physical constraints—an ability termed “intuitive physics”. A flurry of ongoing work is seeking to uncover the mental algorithms underlying intuitive physics, and one prominent view holds that we carry out mental simulations to predict physical dynamics, stepping forward through successive states of the world as we anticipate how physical interactions will play out. Recent evidence from both brain imaging and behavior supports the notion that we use mental simulation in at least some cases (although this remains debated), raising the question of what format these simulations have in the mind. Do mental simulations play out in a strictly symbolic sense, or might they rely on visual imagery as a workspace? Here, we asked whether physical prediction relies on “seeing” dynamics unfold in the mind’s eye. In 200 online participants, we characterized individual differences in the vividness of visual imagery using two well-established self-report measures, and we tested intuitive physics performance using a set of three tasks: predicting the path of a ball rolling over hills, judging how an unstable block tower would fall, and deciding whether an oncoming ball would knock a block off a platform. We found substantial and reliable individual differences in the vividness of visual imagery and in performance on the intuitive physics tasks, but there was no relationship between visual imagery and intuitive physics. Many of those who reported little or no subjective imagery aced the physics tasks nonetheless. Our results show that the subjective vividness of visual imagery has no bearing on physical prediction abilities, and mental simulations of physical dynamics happen outside of the mind’s eye.