ReviewVision (Basel, Switzerland)2023
Phenomenological Studies of Visual Mental Imagery: A Review and Synthesis of Historical Datasets.
Review in Vision (Basel, Switzerland), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- The aphantasia-hyperphantasia spectrum.Neuropsychologia · 2026Article
- Leaving space for imagination: mental imagery-informed teaching framework for enhancing imagery vividness in creative writing.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Stronger Short-Term Memory, Larger Hippocampi and Area V1 in People with High VVIQ Scores.Vision (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Associations between Autistic-like Traits and Imagery Ability.Vision (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This article reviews historically significant phenomenological studies of visual mental imagery (VMI), starting with Fechner in 1860 and continuing to the present. This synthesis of diverse VMI phenomenological studies in healthy adults serves as a unique resource for investigators of individual differences, cognitive development and clinical and neurological conditions. The review focuses on two kinds of VMI, "memory imagery" and "eidetic imagery". Ten primary studies are drawn from three periods of the scholarly literature: early (1860-1929), middle (1930-1999) and recent (2000-2023). It is concluded that memory and eidetic imagery are two forms of constructive imagery, varying along a continuum of intensity or vividness. Vividness is a combination of clarity, colourfulness and liveliness, where clarity is defined by brightness and sharpness, colourfulness by image saturation and liveliness by vivacity, animation, feeling, solidity, projection and metamorphosis. The findings are integrated in a template that specifies, as a tree-like structure, the 16 properties of VMI vividness in healthy adult humans. The template takes into account the weight of evidence drawn from the accounts and reveals an extraordinary degree of consistency in reported VMI characteristics, revealed by specialized studies of healthy adult humans across time, space and culture.
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Registered trials
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