Aphantasia modulates immersion experience but not eye fixation patterns during story reading

People with aphantasia, who report no visual mental imagery, show the same gaze patterns as controls when reading imagery-rich stories. Both groups fixated longer on words and phrases describing sensory-rich perceptual imagery. Despite these identical eye movements, aphantasics reported feeling less immersed in the stories. Among controls, longer fixation on perceptual imagery correlated with stronger self-reported mental imagery, but this relationship was absent or reversed in aphantasics. The findings tentatively suggest that imagery may occur nonconsciously in aphantasia, with the condition primarily impairing introspective access to mental images rather than eliminating imagery itself.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Story reading is often accompanied with mental visualization of the described scenes and events. Recent findings indicate that individuals who report not experiencing any visual imagery (a condition called aphantasia), also report being less absorbed and engaged when reading stories. In the present study, we explored how aphantasics (n = 8) and controls (n = 20) read imagery-rich stories. We recorded eye movements while participants were reading two short stories and analyzed fixation patterns in relation to the stories' imagery content. We observed that imagery content influenced gaze fixation similarly in both groups. More specifically, under perceptual imagery, which involves sensory-rich content, the influence was the strongest, resulting in longer fixation durations during reading of the relevant words and phrases. Despite the same fixation patterns on imagery content, aphantasics reported experiencing less immersion in the stories. Furthermore, we tentatively observed that in control subjects, longer fixation duration on perceptual imagery content was correlated with higher experienced mental imagery, whereas in aphantasic individuals, this relationship did not hold and was even reversed. While our sample size is limited, our results may align with the account that imagery under aphantasia may be nonconscious rather than nonexistent. Given that only reported subjective experiences differed under aphantasia, the condition may primarily impair introspective access to mental images.