Michelle Dawson posts
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Rachel King, Harry Buxton, Ian Tyndall (2024). Aphantasia and autism: An investigation of mental imagery vividness. Consciousness and Cognition, 125, 103749. Elsevier BV.
Abstract
• Examined overlap between autism and aphantasia. • Autistic people reported lower visual mental imagery vividness. • No differences across other sensory modalities. The present study investigated whether autistic adults report different levels of mental imagery vividness than non-autistic adults, and, moreover, if autism is associated with aphantasia which is defined as a condition of reduced or absent voluntary imagery. Clinically diagnosed and self-identifying autistic participants were compared with non-autistic participants in their mental imagery vividness (vision, sound, smell, taste, touch, bodily sensation and emotional feeling) and autistic traits using an online survey (N = 121). The autistic group scored significantly lower than the non-autistic group on imagery vividness (d = −0.44), in addition to having a higher proportion of participants scoring at cut-off for aphantasia. Moreover, a similar difference was observed for the emotional feel (η 2 = 0.11). The vividness of visual and emotional mental imagery was on average lower for autistic individuals, with a higher proportion presenting at cut-off to be considered an aphantasic.
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