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Does aphantasia reveal another way of reasoning?| title | Does aphantasia reveal another way of reasoning? |
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| start_date | 2026/03/30 |
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| schedule | 11h-12h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle des Voûtes |
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| summary | The ability to generate and manipulate mental images is generally considered central to human cognition. However, a major debate in cognitive psychology has pitted the hypothesis of symbolic, abstract, and amodal representations (Pylyshyn, 1981) against that of pictorial, perceptual, and analogical representations (Kosslyn et al., 1995). The renewed interest in aphantasia, defined as an absence or marked reduction in visual mental imagery, sheds new light on this debate. People with aphantasia report relying more on abstract or verbal representations, which could be an advantage in high-level reasoning tasks and correspond to a more “semantic and factual” cognitive style, in contrast to the “episodic and sensory” style associated with hyperphantasia (Zeman et al., 2020). We are currently conducting several studies to determine whether aphantasia constitutes a distinct cognitive style and whether it confers specific advantages. During my seminar, I will present results that have enabled us to identify two subgroups of aphantastic individuals: one characterized by a more spatial profile, the other by a more verbal profile. These profiles are distinguished by diZerent behavioral performances, particularly in reasoning tasks. These initial results prompted a second series of studies devoted to reasoning, inspired by the Visual Imagery Impedance Hypothesis (KnauZ & Johnson-Laird, 2002). We replicated the eZect whereby visual imagery can slow down abstract reasoning in individuals with typical imagery. However, this eZect was attenuated in aphantastic participants. Taken together, these results support the existence of distinct cognitive styles within aphantasia and reinforce the idea of multiple representational formats that may influence cognitive performance. |
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| responsibles | Basques |
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Workflow history| from state (1) | to state | comment | date |
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| submitted | published | | 2026/03/25 10:38 UTC |
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