AAP 2026 CONFERENCE

Aphantasia, where individuals report lacking voluntary conscious visual imagery, has increasingly captured attention in empirical and philosophical literature. One fascinating aspect of this condition is: empirical findings suggest that aphantasics employ visual strategies to perform tasks—at least in some cases. The discrepancy between subjective reports and objective evidence motivates some researchers to defend the “unconscious” view, according to which aphantasics use unconscious visual imagery. In this talk, I will argue for the alternative, “conscious” view through the lens of metacognition.

When it comes to eliciting reliable introspective reports, consciousness research highlights a distinction between “visibility” measures and “confidence” measures. All studies on aphantasia use the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) to recruit participants. As the VVIQ asks participants to only indicate the “vivacity” of their mental images, it closely resembles a visibility measure. I contend that in determining whether aphantasics indeed rely on unconscious visual imagery, we should further investigate their confidence in the accuracy of their imagery-task performance.

Few studies on aphantasia have included confidence ratings. However, intriguingly, aphantasics typically exhibit good metacognitive sensitivity. These findings provide supporting evidence that they engage in conscious, task-relevant visual imagery.