Dissociable episodic memory performance and subjective experience across the aphantasia imagery spectrum

Trial-by-trial vividness fluctuations, across normal imagery, reduced imagery, and total aphantasia, are linked to episodic memory performance, while trait-level and averaged vividness are not.

• Why it matters: The study addresses whether episodic memory depends on conscious access to imagery and whether reduced imagery differs from total aphantasia in objective performance and subjective experience.
• What they did: Participants in younger and older age groups completed an incidental-encoding episodic memory task with visual or spatial change identification, plus trial-by-trial vividness and confidence ratings and response times.
• The result: Reduced imagery and total aphantasia show dissociable patterns: reduced imagery has lower confidence, slower vividness judgments, and vividness predicts accuracy and response times more strongly; age-related memory decline appears in controls and reduced groups but not in the aphantasic group.