Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Westminster, London, United Kingdom.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2024 Apr 3;19(4):e0300219. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0300219. eCollection 2024.
Aphantasia is characterised by the inability to create mental images in one's mind. Studies investigating impairments in imagery typically focus on the visual domain. However, it is possible to generate many different forms of imagery including imagined auditory, kinesthetic, tactile, motor, taste and other experiences. Recent studies show that individuals with aphantasia report a lack of imagery in modalities, other than vision, including audition. However, to date, no research has examined whether these reductions in self-reported auditory imagery are associated with decrements in tasks that require auditory imagery. Understanding the extent to which visual and auditory imagery deficits co-occur can help to better characterise the core deficits of aphantasia and provide an alternative perspective on theoretical debates on the extent to which imagery draws on modality-specific or modality-general processes. In the current study, individuals that self-identified as being aphantasic and matched control participants with typical imagery performed two tasks: a musical pitch-based imagery and voice-based categorisation task. The majority of participants with aphantasia self-reported significant deficits in both auditory and visual imagery. However, we did not find a concomitant decrease in performance on tasks which require auditory imagery, either in the full sample or only when considering those participants that reported significant deficits in both domains. These findings are discussed in relation to the mechanisms that might obscure observation of imagery deficits in auditory imagery tasks in people that report reduced auditory imagery.
心像缺失症的特征是无法在脑海中产生心理意象。研究意象损伤的通常集中在视觉领域。然而，人们可以产生许多不同形式的意象，包括想象中的听觉、动觉、触觉、运动、味觉和其他体验。最近的研究表明，心像缺失症患者报告说，除了视觉之外，其他感觉模式（包括听觉）也缺乏意象。然而，迄今为止，尚无研究检查这些自我报告的听觉意象减少是否与需要听觉意象的任务中的缺陷有关。了解视觉和听觉意象缺陷的程度是否共同发生，可以帮助更好地描述心像缺失症的核心缺陷，并为关于意象在多大程度上依赖于特定感觉模式或一般感觉模式的理论争论提供另一种视角。在当前的研究中，自我认定为心像缺失症的个体和具有典型心像的匹配对照组参与者执行了两项任务：基于音乐音高的意象和基于声音的分类任务。大多数心像缺失症患者自我报告在听觉和视觉意象方面都存在明显的缺陷。然而，我们没有发现需要听觉意象的任务的表现有相应的下降，无论是在整个样本中，还是仅在考虑那些报告在两个领域都存在明显缺陷的参与者时。这些发现与可能掩盖在报告听觉意象减少的人进行听觉意象任务中观察到的意象缺陷的机制有关。
