What Do You See With Your Eyes Closed?
From no mental pictures at all to images almost as clear as seeing
Ask people to picture an apple and some will see a shiny red fruit in detail, while others will see nothing at all and simply know what an apple is. Until recently most people assumed everyone experienced this the same way. This test measures how vivid your inner pictures are, then looks at imagined sounds, the other senses and memories, because the mind's eye is only part of the story.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Where a statement asks you to imagine something, try it for a few seconds before answering. There are no better or worse answers here.
What it measures
How vivid your mental imagery is. The first dimension follows the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire, the classic measure of how clearly people see things in the mind's eye. The other three cover experiences discussed in the research on aphantasia and hyperphantasia: imagined sounds, the other senses, and reliving personal memories. It is not a creativity or intelligence test.
Based on: Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (Marks, 1973) and research on aphantasia (Zeman, Dewar & Della Sala, 2015)
Possible results
Visual vividness
How clearly you see things in your mind's eye.
Inner hearing
How clearly you can hear sounds and voices in your head.
Other senses
Imagined smell, taste, touch and movement.
Reliving memories
Whether memories come back as scenes or as facts.
Common questions
What is aphantasia?
It is the name Adam Zeman and colleagues gave in 2015 to a lifelong inability to form voluntary visual images. It is not an illness. A 2022 study across two samples totalling over 1,000 people found that about 4% had aphantasia - imagery that was absent or markedly impaired.
Does weak mental imagery mean I am less creative?
No. A 2020 study found that people with aphantasia were somewhat more often in science and maths jobs and people with hyperphantasia more often in creative ones, but these are tendencies in large groups. Plenty of writers, designers and artists report little or no imagery and work through ideas, words and sketches instead.
Can mental imagery be trained?
Somewhat, within limits. Practice, such as describing a scene aloud in detail, can make existing imagery a little clearer, and athletes and musicians use it deliberately. For people with lifelong aphantasia there is no established method to create imagery, and most of them report that they do not feel a need for one.
Sources
- Marks, D. F. (1973). Visual imagery differences in the recall of pictures. British Journal of Psychology. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1973.tb01322.x
- Zeman, A., Dewar, M., & Della Sala, S. (2015). Lives without imagery - Congenital aphantasia. Cortex. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2015.05.019
- Zeman, A., Milton, F., Della Sala, S., Dewar, M., Frayling, T., Gaddum, J., Hattersley, A., Heuerman-Williamson, B., et al. (2020). Phantasia - The psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes. Cortex. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2020.04.003
- Dance, C. J., Ipser, A., & Simner, J. (2022). The prevalence of aphantasia (imagery weakness) in the general population. Consciousness and Cognition. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2021.103243
An honest note Only the first bar corresponds to the published scale, the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire; the other three are related experiences from the aphantasia research, not validated factors of it. All statements are Quinthea's own wording, so scores are not comparable with published norms or cut-offs. Inner experience is hard to compare between people. Aphantasia and hyperphantasia are variations, not disorders, and nothing here is a diagnosis.