Azañón Elena, Pounder Zoe, Figueroa Alec, Reeder Reshanne R
Medical Faculty, Otto von Guericke University.
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford.
J Exp Psychol Gen. 2025 Jul;154(7):2043-2057. doi: 10.1037/xge0001756. Epub 2025 May 5.
Vivid visual mental imagery is thought to influence perceptual processing, but much of the current knowledge on this comes from one highly cited, though underpowered ( = 8) study from 2007, which found that more vivid imagery increases interference between imagined and perceptual content. However, that study has not been repeated since. We therefore conducted a conceptual (Experiment 1) and direct (Experiment 2) replication study. In Experiment 1, we recruited 185 online participants across the mental imagery spectrum, including individuals with self-reported aphantasia (impoverished or absent mental imagery) and hyperphantasia (extremely vivid imagery). In Experiment 2, we recruited 56 participants, 28 with self-reported aphantasia and 28 gender- and age-matched typical imagers. Consistent with the original 2007 study's interpretation, we predicted that those with more vivid imagery would exhibit stronger imagery-perception interference, as measured by decreased performance in a priming task when a color and word were congruent (e.g., red prime, word "RED") compared to incongruent (e.g., blue prime, word "RED"). We were unable to replicate this effect in either experiment. Instead, we observed performance benefits for color-word congruency across the mental imagery spectrum, with no difference in the magnitude of this effect across imagery ability or vividness, even among those with extreme imagery variations (aphantasia, hyperphantasia). Interestingly, we observed a relationship between a measure of mental imagery externalism and the congruency effect, suggesting that individuals with the ability to project their mental images into the external environment (i.e., prophantasia) may exhibit stronger congruency effects. The results of this study challenge our current understanding of the role of mental imagery in perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
生动的视觉心理意象被认为会影响感知加工，但目前关于这方面的许多知识都来自2007年一项被大量引用但样本量较小（N = 8）的研究，该研究发现更生动的意象会增加想象内容与感知内容之间的干扰。然而，自那以后该研究并未被重复验证。因此，我们进行了一项概念性（实验1）和直接（实验2）的重复研究。在实验1中，我们招募了185名处于心理意象范围各个层次的在线参与者，包括自我报告有phantasia（心理意象匮乏或缺失）和hyperphantasia（极其生动的意象）的个体。在实验2中，我们招募了56名参与者，其中28名自我报告有phantasia，另外28名是年龄和性别匹配的典型意象者。与2007年原始研究的解释一致，我们预测那些具有更生动意象的人会表现出更强的意象 - 感知干扰，这通过在启动任务中颜色和单词一致（例如，红色启动，单词“RED”）与不一致（例如，蓝色启动，单词“RED”）时表现下降来衡量。但我们在两个实验中都未能重复这一效应。相反，我们观察到在整个心理意象范围内，颜色 - 单词一致性都有表现优势，并且在意象能力或生动程度方面，这种效应的大小没有差异，即使在那些意象变化极端的个体（phantasia、hyperphantasia）中也是如此。有趣的是，我们观察到心理意象外在论的一种测量与一致性效应之间存在关系，这表明有能力将其心理意象投射到外部环境中的个体（即prophantasia）可能表现出更强的一致性效应。本研究结果挑战了我们目前对心理意象在感知中作用的理解。（PsycInfo数据库记录（c）2025美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
