Individuals vary significantly in their mental visualization ability
Extensive empirical research demonstrates that people vary widely in their mental visualization abilities and imagery vividness, with distinct neural, physiological, and cognitive correlates.
The retrieved literature consistently confirms that individuals differ greatly in their mental imagery and spatial visualization capacities, examining everything from neural network topologies to physiological correlates like blood pressure and heart rate variability.
Nagai Y, Thomas A, Woulfe L, Wray S, Kvamme TL, Monzel M, Critchley H, Silvanto J. Autonomic challenge uncovers hidden link between diastolic blood pressure and mental imagery vividness. 2026. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.07.12.738020
The study investigates physiological correlates of individual differences in mental imagery vividness.
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Ernst M, Kronbichler M, Meyer P. The cognitive construction of moral scenes: Associations of visuospatial ability and impulsivity with perspective and vividness in mental simulation.. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2026.06.007
The research explores how individual differences in spatial visualization ability and impulsivity affect moral simulation and imagery vividness.
Chkhaidze A, Reeder RR, Gag C, Kiyonaga A, Coulson S. From dots to faces: individual differences in visual imagery capacity predict the content of Ganzflicker-induced hallucinations.. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niag016
The experiment demonstrates that individuals vary significantly in visual imagery capacity, which predicts the complexity of their internally generated hallucinations.
Zhang X, Kvamme T, Nagai Y, Silvanto J. How the Body Shapes the Mind’s Eye: Cardiac vagal reactivity predicts visual imagery vividness. 2026. https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.12.724726
The study examines how individual differences in cardiac vagal reactivity predict variations in visual imagery vividness.
Vanbuckhave C, Eikner JS, Laeng B, Onnis L, Mathôt S. Pupil Size Reflects Trial-Level Variability in Imagery Vividness During Immersive Storytelling but Not (or Hardly) Individual Differences in Trait Imagery.. 2026. https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.70298
The paper notes that individuals vary extensively in task-unrelated imagery abilities at the individual level.
Timo Kvamme, Massimo Lumaca, Claude Julien Bajada, Juha Silvanto. Neural Network Topologies Supporting Individual Variations in Vividness of Visual Imagery. 2025. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/kmf5q_v1
The study investigates the neural foundations of considerable variability in visual imagery vividness across individuals.
Kyoko Hine, Ryunosuke Hayashida, Shuma Fujikawa, Shigeki Nakauchi. Effects of Physical Viewpoint and Individual Differences in Imagery Vividness on False Recognition. 2026. https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-9263360/v1
The research examines how individual differences in visual imagery interact with memory distortion and false recognition.
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