Aphantasia and autism: An investigation of mental imagery vividness

IF 4.6 Q2 MATERIALS SCIENCE, BIOMATERIALS ACS Applied Bio Materials Pub Date : 2024-09-06 DOI:10.1016/j.concog.2024.103749

Rachel King, Harry Buxton, Ian Tyndall

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Abstract

Objective

The present study investigated whether autistic adults report different levels of mental imagery vividness than non-autistic adults, and, moreover, if autism is associated with aphantasia which is defined as a condition of reduced or absent voluntary imagery.

Design and Methods

Clinically diagnosed and self-identifying autistic participants were compared with non-autistic participants in their mental imagery vividness (vision, sound, smell, taste, touch, bodily sensation and emotional feeling) and autistic traits using an online survey (N = 121).

Results

The autistic group scored significantly lower than the non-autistic group on imagery vividness (d = −0.44), in addition to having a higher proportion of participants scoring at cut-off for aphantasia. Moreover, a similar difference was observed for the emotional feel (η² = 0.11).

Conclusion

The vividness of visual and emotional mental imagery was on average lower for autistic individuals, with a higher proportion presenting at cut-off to be considered an aphantasic.

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幻觉症与自闭症：心理意象生动性调查

研究目的本研究探讨了自闭症成人的心理意象生动程度是否与非自闭症成人不同，以及自闭症是否与意象障碍有关：通过在线调查（N = 121），比较临床诊断和自我认同的自闭症参与者与非自闭症参与者的心理意象生动性（视觉、声音、气味、味觉、触觉、身体感觉和情绪感觉）和自闭症特征：自闭症组在意象生动性方面的得分明显低于非自闭症组（d = -0.44），而且有更高比例的参与者得分达到了幻觉症的临界值。此外，在情绪感受方面也观察到了类似的差异（η2 = 0.11）：结论：自闭症患者的视觉和情绪心理意象的生动性平均较低，达到象觉障碍临界值的比例较高。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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