|
Aphantasia
Aphantasia ( , ) is the inability to create mental imagery. The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 but has since remained relatively unstudied. Interest in the phenomenon renewed after the publication of a study in 2015 conducted by a team led by Professor Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter. Zeman's team coined the term ''aphantasia'', derived from the ancient Greek word (), which means "imagination", and the prefix (), which means "without". Research on the condition is still scarce. Hyperphantasia, the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery, is the opposite of aphantasia. History The phenomenon was first described by Francis Galton in 1880 in a statistical study about mental imagery. Galton found it was a common phenomenon among his peers. He wrote: In 1897, Théodule-Armand Ribot reported a kind of "typographic visual type" imagination, consisting in mentally seeing ideas in the form of corresponding printed words. As paraphrased b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hyperphantasia
Hyperphantasia is the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery. It is the opposite condition to aphantasia, where mental visual imagery is not present. The experience of hyperphantasia is more common than aphantasia and has been described as being "as vivid as real seeing". Hyperphantasia constitutes all five senses within vivid mental imagery; however, "visual" mental imagery research dominates the literature, and there is a lack of research on the other four senses. Research into hyperphantasia is most commonly completed by self-report questionnaires, such as the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), developed by David Marks in 1973, which evaluates the vividness of an individual's mental imagery out of a score of 80. Individuals scoring from 75 to 80 are deemed hyperphantasics and are estimated to constitute around 2.5% of the population. Mechanism There is no unique mental imagery cortical network; the formation of mental imagery involves many regions o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mental Image
A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of 'perceiving' some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are sometimes episodes, particularly on falling asleep ( hypnagogic imagery) and waking up ( hypnopompic imagery), when the mental imagery may be dynamic, phantasmagoric and involuntary in character, repeatedly presenting identifiable objects or actions, spilling over from waking events, or defying perception, presenting a kaleidoscopic field, in which no distinct object can be discerned. Mental imagery can sometimes produce the same effects as would be produced by the behavior or experience imagined. The nature of these experiences, what makes them possible, and their function (if any) have long been subjects of research and controversy in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and, more recently, neuroscience. As contemporary researche ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vividness Of Visual Imagery Questionnaire
The Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) was developed in 1973 by the British psychologist David Marks (Marks, 1973). The VVIQ consists of 16 items in four groups of 4 items in which the participant is invited to consider the mental image formed in thinking about specific scenes and situations. The vividness of the image is rated along a 5-point scale. The questionnaire has been widely used as a measure of individual differences in vividness of visual imagery. The large body of evidence confirms that the VVIQ is a valid and reliable psychometric measure of visual image vividness. In 1995 Marks published a new version of the VVIQ, the VVIQ2 (Marks, 1995). This questionnaire consists of twice the number of items and reverses the rating scale so that higher scores reflect higher vividness. Campos and Pérez-Fabello (2009) evaluated the reliability and construct validity of the VVIQ and the VVIQ2. Cronbach's \alpha reliabilities for both the VVIQ and the VVIQ-2 were found ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
