Center for Logic, Epistemology and History of Science, State University of Campinas, R. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, 251 - Cidade Universitária, Campinas, SP 13083-859, Brazil; Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, 4200 Fifth Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
Department of Psychology, Personality Psychology and Biological Psychology, University of Bonn, Kaiser-Karl-Ring 9, 53111 Bonn, Germany.
Conscious Cogn. 2024 Apr;120:103679. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2024.103679. Epub 2024 Apr 1.
Aphantasia is a condition that is often characterized as the impaired ability to create voluntary mental images. Aphantasia is assumed to selectively affect voluntary imagery mainly because even though aphantasics report being unable to visualize something at will, many report having visual dreams. We argue that this common characterization of aphantasia is incorrect. Studies on aphantasia are often not clear about whether they are assessing voluntary or involuntary imagery, but some studies show that several forms of involuntary imagery are also affected in aphantasia (including imagery in dreams). We also raise problems for two attempts to show that involuntary images are preserved in aphantasia. In addition, we report the results of a study about afterimages in aphantasia, which suggest that these tend to be less intense in aphantasics than in controls. Involuntary imagery is often treated as a unitary kind that is either present or absent in aphantasia. We suggest that this approach is mistaken and that we should look at different types of involuntary imagery case by case. Doing so reveals no evidence of preserved involuntary imagery in aphantasia. We suggest that a broader characterization of aphantasia, as a deficit in forming mental imagery, whether voluntary or not, is more appropriate. Characterizing aphantasia as a volitional deficit is likely to lead researchers to give incorrect explanations for aphantasia, and to look for the wrong mechanisms underlying it.
心像缺失是一种病症，其主要特征通常被认为是缺乏生成主动心像的能力。心像缺失被认为会选择性地影响主动心像，主要是因为尽管心像缺失者报告说无法随意想象某件事，但许多人报告说他们会做视觉梦。我们认为，这种对心像缺失的常见描述是不正确的。心像缺失的研究通常不清楚他们评估的是主动心像还是被动心像，但一些研究表明，几种形式的被动心像也受到心像缺失的影响（包括梦境中的心像）。我们还对试图证明心像缺失保留被动图像的两种尝试提出了问题。此外，我们报告了心像缺失后像研究的结果，这些结果表明，心像缺失者的后像往往不如对照组强烈。被动心像通常被视为一种单一的存在或缺失的形式。我们认为这种方法是错误的，我们应该逐个案例研究不同类型的被动心像。这样做并没有发现心像缺失中保留被动心像的证据。我们建议将心像缺失更广泛地描述为形成心像的缺陷，无论是主动的还是被动的，这种描述更为恰当。将心像缺失描述为意志缺陷可能会导致研究人员对心像缺失做出错误的解释，并寻找其背后错误的机制。
