Individual variability in mental imagery vividness does not predict perceptual interference with imagery: A replication study of Cui et al., 2007

Vivid visual mental imagery is thought to influence perceptual processing, but much of the current knowledge on this comes from one highly-cited, though underpowered (N=8) study from 2007, which found that more vivid imagery increases interference between imagined and perceptual content. However, that study has not been repeated since. We therefore conducted a conceptual (Experiment 1) and direct (Experiment 2) replication study. In Experiment 1, we recruited 185 online participants across the mental imagery spectrum, including individuals with self-reported aphantasia (the absence of mental imagery) and hyperphantasia (extremely vivid imagery). In Experiment 2, we recruited 56 participants, 28 with self-reported aphantasia and 28 gender- and age-matched typical imagers. We predicted that those with more vivid imagery would exhibit stronger imagery-perception interference, as measured by decreased performance in a modified Stroop task when the word and color were congruent compared to incongruent, consistent with the 2007 study's interpretation. We were unable to replicate this effect in either experiment. Instead, we observed performance benefits for color-word congruency across the mental imagery spectrum, with no difference in the magnitude of this effect across imagery ability or vividness, even among those with extreme imagery variations (aphantasia, hyperphantasia). Interestingly, we observed a significant relationship between a measure of mental imagery realism and the congruency effect, where individuals with the ability to project their mental images into the external environment (i.e., prophantasia) showed stronger congruency effects. This finding challenges our current understanding of the role of mental imagery in perception.