Most people rely heavily on visual imagery in processing language, especially when they’re reading narrative descriptions. An author’s vivid language often triggers mental images in the reader that enhance their reading experience, allowing them to “see” the settings, characters, and events as if they were watching a movie in their head.
Mental imagery doesn’t just add a richness to the storytelling experience, but it also helps with emotional engagement. The readers feel more connected to the characters and events in the story if they can see them; they become more “real.”
That’s all well and good for most people, but for those with a condition called aphantasia [see previous blog here], seeing those images isn’t possible. Their brains don’t process language that way. Does that mean they’re incapable of engaging with a story?
No, it doesn’t. It just means their experience with words differs from their peers.
To better understand how aphantasia alters reading fiction, a research group at Radboud University in the Netherlands explored this difference in depth. Their goal was to study whether aphantasics would have a fundamentally different reading experience than people who used visual imagery, particularly in the areas of emotional connection and how immersed they became in the story.
The team recruited 47 individuals with aphantasia and 51 control participants with “normal” visual imagery. They drew from a pool of online platforms like Reddit and Facebook, because they have specific communities for aphantasics.
All the participants were given the same short story — My Dead by Peter Orner. It’s a third-person narrative that explores ideas of human connectedness and near-death experiences. The story was specifically selected for its descriptive content, which the team felt would engage the participants’ visual imagination.
After reading the story, participants completed several questionnaires to measure different aspects of their reading experience. These included their overall enjoyment of the story, how much they engaged emotionally with the characters, and how absorbed they felt in the narrative’s world.
The questionnaires also inquired about which of the story elements — such as scenery, character actions, or dialogue — captured the participants’ attention.
The results were both expected and surprising. Firstly, the responses indicated that aphantasics were less likely to become emotionally engaged with the story or absorbed in its world. They also indicated a lower level of attention to the story’s scenery and character actions, and they were less likely to sympathize with or feel connected to the story’s characters. All this was expected.
Secondly, despite the aphantasics reduced emotional engagement, there was no significant difference between the groups for their overall appreciation of the story. Both groups rated the story similarly in terms of how much they liked it. This result was a bit surprising.
In general, both groups reported reading a similar number of books per year, and their preferred genres aligned. However, aphantasics reported consuming more fiction and nonfiction content through other media like television, movies, and video games, compared to the control group. This might be, the team suggested, a preference for added visual stimulation to compensate for their lack of visual imagery.
Laura Speed, the lead author of the paper, concluded that, “aphantasics and controls did differ in their experience of the story, which supports a role for mental imagery or mental simulation in story reading. But, since overall liking did not differ between the two groups, nor did recall of the story, this suggests that mental imagery or mental simulation is not critical for comprehending a story.”
If you’re interested in reading the original paper, you can find it at The Role of Visual Imagery in Story Reading: Evidence from Aphantasia.
