Lack of ability to visualise does not impair a reader’s enjoyment, research finds
By Heather Allen
(Image: Radboud University)
When most of us read, we imagine the story in our heads. Being able to picture the scene helps us to experience the reality of the story, to engage with it and to make sense of it. But what if we do not have the capacity to visualise? A new study by researchers at Radboud University has found that staying engaged with a story is more challenging for people with aphantasia, a condition which makes it difficult or impossible to imagine what is described. However, the study found that aphantasia does not otherwise impair the enjoyment of reading.
Aphantasia was first discovered in 2015, and people with the condition find it difficult or impossible to create visual images of concepts, objects or scenes, or to recall memories in a visual way. It is estimated that five per cent of the world’s population has this condition. Researchers Laura Speed, Lynn Eekhof and Marloes Mak from Radboud University sought to discover the differences in reading experience between people with aphantasia and those without the condition. A total of 47 people with aphantasia were compared to 51 controls on their experience of reading a short story and their reading habits. An established visual imagery questionnaire was used to determine whether someone had aphantasia. Participants answered questions about their experience of the story, as well as their general reading preferences and habits.
The study, recruited and conducted online, found that aphantasics were less likely to be engaged with, interested in, and absorbed in the story, and experienced reduced emotional engagement with and sympathy for the story characters, compared to controls. However, aphantasics and controls did not differ in how much they liked or appreciated the story, and the reading habits of the two groups also did not differ significantly. The results have implications for embodied theories of language, suggesting visual imagery may influence how a story is experienced, but it is not the only route to story enjoyment.
According to language scientist Laura Speed, the study’s lead author, visual imagery is thought to be involved in various cognitive processes, including short term memory, autobiographical memory and future thinking, as well as language processing. Brain imaging studies indicate that visual parts of the brain are activated during language comprehension. A growing area of research has drawn attention to people with aphantasia, raising questions about how cognition may function without imagery.
Previous studies have noted that individuals often experience disappointment when an actor does not resemble the mental image they had of a character in the film adaptation of a book they have read. Visual imagery has been associated with how transported by or absorbed in a story readers are, and subsequently how much readers enjoyed stories. Aphantasics have rated short verbal descriptions of people in distress as less emotionally moving than controls, but the same difference was not observed with photographs of people in distress.
The Radboud University study is the first to examine and compare the experience of reading a story and general reading habits between individuals with aphantasia and control participants without the condition. Participants were given the fast-fiction short story My Dead by Peter Orner to read online. The story depicts two strangers who meet and drive to a séance together, ending in a near-death experience on their way home. Their experience was assessed using three established reading experience scales: the Story Appreciation Scale, the Story World Absorption Scale, and the Transformative Reading Scale.
The Story Appreciation Scale is used to assess how much participants like and enjoy a story, and what their aesthetic experience of a story is. Story World Absorption describes the feelings people may have when reading a good story or book where they go beyond comprehending the meaning of the words on a page, to a captivating experience that helps them become completely involved in the stories they read. The Transformative Reading Scale assesses the transformative aspect of reading (how literature can change concepts of the self and others) by focusing on sympathy for story characters, resonance with the reader and their past, and experience of the story through visual and bodily experience.
“Interestingly, people with aphantasia do not report impairments in their language skills,” Dr Speed said. “It is not the case that someone who can’t visually imagine ‘red’ can’t understand the word. But visual imagery is associated with how someone experiences a story. It appears that people with aphantasia are less absorbed in the story world and feel less emotional involvement with characters.”
In addition, descriptions of scenery and actions were less appreciated by people with aphantasia than by the control group, Dr Speed said, but the groups did not differ in how much they enjoyed the story. In addition, both groups reported a similar number of books read per year, and did not differ in how frequently they read fiction or non-fiction, nor how frequently they listen to audiobooks. Both groups appear to like similar genres of fiction, with equal numbers favouring Science fiction (19), adventure (4), and crime/mystery (11). A number of aphantasics even reported writing fiction themselves. Aphantasics reported more frequently consuming fiction and non-fiction another way, such as films or TV shows, which could reflect a preference for added visual stimulation to compensate for their reduced visual imagery.
“It seems that visual imagery is not the only way to enjoy a story,” Dr Speed said. “The plot or style of language, for example, unlike descriptions of scenery, doesn’t require strong visual imagery. Aphantasic participants in our study reported appreciating these aspects, but not descriptions of scenery. So there are, besides visual imagery, other routes to story enjoyment and language comprehension. What works for some does not necessarily work for others. It is important to explore and understand this diversity in reading approaches.”
Source: The role of visual imagery in story reading: Evidence from aphantasia, by Laura J Speed, Lynn S Eekhof and Marloes Mak, Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Netherlands.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810024000126