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Conflicting Intuitions May Be Based On

Differing Abilities: Evidence from Mental
Imaging Research
Article in Journal of Consciousness Studies December 2008
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Bill Faw

Conflicting Intuitions May Be

Based On Differing Abilities
Evidence from Mental Imaging Research
Abstract: Much of the current imaging literature either denies the
existence of wakeful non-mental imagers, views non-imagers
motivationally as repressors or neurotic, or acknowledges them
but does not fully incorporate them into their models. Neurobiologists
testing for imaging loss seem to assume that visual recognition,
describing objects, and free-hand drawing require the forming of conscious images. The intuition that the psyche never thinks without an
image.... the reasoning mind thinks its ideas in the form of images
(Aristotle) has a long tradition in philosophical psychology, from
Aristotle through the British empiricists to the British-empiricist-inspired introspection paradigm of Titchener. The massive shift in
early experimental psychology to the introspective-antagonistic paradigm of Watsons behaviourism, may have sprung from the contrary
intuition that no one thinks in mental images. In both cases, people
seemed to assume that what is in ones own mind is in everybodys
mind. A third, mediating, intuition that some people do not think
with conscious mental imagery seems to be confirmed by empirical
studies on many levels. From the early imagery interviews of Francis
Galton through many modern surveys, including my own, a consistent
diversity of self-reports on ones own mental imagery abilities suggests that some 2-5% of people are very poor- or non-visual-imagers
who, yet, maintain normal visual recognition abilities. Comparable
estimates have been made in auditory and other imagery modalities.
Correspondence:
Professor Bill Faw, Brewton Parker College, Mount Vernon, Georgia, USA.
Email: bfaw@bpc.edu

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16, No. 4, 2009, pp. ????

B. FAW

In addition to them, there is a variety of non-normal clinical nonimagers, who have partially or completely lost their imaging abilities
due to strokes or head trauma. Some of these become essentially like
natural non-imagers, but more of them suffer corresponding perceptual and sensory-memory loss. A few even show perceptual losses
without imaging losses. This suggests that those who have normal
perceptual and approximately-normal memorial abilities but claim
not to be able to form mental images might have some sort of subliminal imaging ability that allows normal perception but not conscious
supraliminal imaging.

Introduction
Confidence of knowing
I recently (Faw, 2008) wrote a JCS book review on Hurlburt and
Schwitzgebels (2007) book Describing Inner Experience: Proponent
Meets Skeptic. Their book grew out of a pair of concurrent sessions at
Tucson-2002, where the two authors, I, and others gave presentations
on first-person approaches. In the Q&A of my paper on mental imagery,
both Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel challenged my knowledge of my self
report that I am a non-mental-imager!
While they only challenged my confidence of knowing that I am a
non-imager, the sharpest response that psychologists and philosophers have given to my conference papers on mental imagery is disbelief that I (or anyone) can be a wakeful non-mental-imager that I
must be mistaken (or worse!) when I report that when I close my eyes I
see nothing, I silently think and silently read (with no auditory
voice), and am haunted by silent tunes (with no auditory sound). But
that when asleep I have frequent vivid and occasionally-lucid dreams
in all sensory modalities. While awake I have good non-visual spatial
imagery and motor imagery. I can understand other peoples surprise
over my dis-ability, because I was 35 or so before I realized (while
reading a pop psychology book) that anyone had actual mental
pictures, including my wife of 15 years; and I was about 50 before a
student helping me with mental imagery research mentioned that he
heard his own voice when he read; and a colleague said that she heard
her choir directors voice in her head whenever she read the Bible, but
other voices when she read other books.

Denial of normal non-imaging

It has been amazing to see how much of the current imaging literature
either doubts the existence of my category (Richardson, 1994: a

CONFLICTING INTUITIONS & MENTAL IMAGERY

capacity to image vividly is present in most, if not all, organically

intact individuals); views non-imagers motivationally as repressors
(Kunzendorf, 19956a,b) or neurotic (Zangwill quoted in Brain,
1954); or acknowledge my category but dont fully incorporate it into
their models (Farah, Kosslyn, and many others).
As recently as 1985, Botez and colleagues reported a so-called
unique case of a person with a pure inborn defective
revisualization, without other material neurological deficits (p. 375).
They were quite amazed that this natural non-imager could draw free
hand and recognize objects. Neurobiologists testing for imaging loss
seem to assume that visual recognition, describing objects, and
free-hand drawing require the forming of conscious images Levine
and colleagues (including Martha Farah), 1985): The objective abilities can be considered descriptions of the subjective phenomenon,
means of providing acceptable evidence of its presence (p. 391). This
objective/subjective evidentiary concept derives from the
mediational behaviourism of Spence and Tolman, in which (unlike
the radical behaviourism of Watson and Skinner) one studies
behaviour to infer mind.

Conflicting Intuitions About Imaging Abilities

Intuition A: All Thought Involves Imaging

Eidola vision and representation

The assumption that everyone who can recognize objects and everyone who dreams must have visual images while awake, suggests a
more specific assumption which has a long tradition in philosophical
psychology: that all normal thought involves imaging. This goes back
at least to the eidolon/a (X4*T8@</")-copy-theory which holds that
we see because minute eidola (idols or copies) emanate from visible
objects and travel through the air to the eyes of the beholder stated
to be one of Empedocles visual theories, by Aristotle (ca. 330BC/
1952), in Sense and the Sensible (p. 674). Hobbes (1651/1939, p. 132)
refers to this view: grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle that
the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a visible speciesa visible
show, apparition , or aspect, or a being seen; the receiving whereof
into the eye is seeing. The eidola theory of vision suggested a very
simple form of mental representations: memory traces, objects of
imagination, and dream imagery are these eidola, having entered
through sense-organ pores and now in the mind. Thinking may be a

B. FAW

matter of these eidola rearranging themselves by laws of association

a toy box theory of thinking.

Aristotle
The assumption that all normal thought at least involves imaging was
articulated by Aristotle in De Anima and in Treatise on the Principle
of Life (cited in Mandler & Mandler, 1964). Selections from De
Anima, On Sense and the Sensible, and On Dreams are from Aristotle
(ca. 330BC/1952).
De Anima: thinking may be impossible without imagination
(phantasia: N"<J"F\") (p. 632). To imagine is identical with the
thinking of exactly the same as what one in the strictest sense perceives
(p. 660). The soul never thinks without an image (phantasma:
N"<JVF:") (p. 663). The faculty of thinking then thinks the forms in
the images (p. 664). When the mind is actively aware of anything it is
necessarily aware of it along with an image, for images are like sensuous contents except in that they contain no matter (p. 664).
Principle of Life: The reasoning mind thinks its ideas in the form of
images; and as the mind determines the objects it should pursue or avoid
in terms of these images, even in the absence of sensation, so it is stimulated to action when occupied with them . When the mind there in its
world of images says that a thing is pleasant or painful here in the world
of things it pursues or avoids in a word, it acts. (p. 9).

While some of these Aristotle quotes seem to indicate that thinking

can be reduced to imagination and images, others do not. Also, note
that imaging is not only crucial to thinking but leads directly to action:
presumably the very entertaining of images of the pleasant or painful
objects leads to our response!
Aristotle goes on in De Anima to differentiate between sensitive
imagination, found in all animals, and deliberative imagination,
found only in calculative minds (p. 666) and differentiates imagination from discursive reasoning (p. 659) while still portraying
thinking as involving imagination plus judgment. Words, as well as
images, play a crucial role in thinking. (See Nigel Thomas, 2008, for a
good review of Aristotles views of imagery and imagination and
some controversies in translation.)
De Anima: Thinking is different from perceiving and is held to be in part
imagination, in part judgment (p. 660). Concepts differ from images
though they necessarily involve them (p. 664). Many men follow their
imaginations contrary to knowledge, and in all animals other than man
there is no thinking or calculation but only imagination (p. 665). It is
hearing that contributes most to the growth of intelligence. For rational

CONFLICTING INTUITIONS & MENTAL IMAGERY

discourseis composed of words, and each word is a thought-symbol

(On Sense and the Sensible, p. 674).

Despite the importance he gave to imagination and images, Aristotle accepted the claims that there are sleeping non-imagers: There
are cases of persons who in their whole lives have never had a dream
(On Dreams, p. 706).

British Empiricists: Thomas Hobbes

The British empiricists Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and others held views
that perhaps put even more thinking weight on imagery. Thomas
Hobbes in Part I, Chapters 13 of Leviathan (1651/1939) articulated
the close link between sensing and subsequent imaging. Italics within
quotes are from Hobbes.
Of Sense: there is no conception in a mans mind which hath not at
first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The
rest are derived from that original (p. 131).
Of Imagination: Imagination therefore is nothing but decaying sense;
and is found in men, and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as
waking [but when the sense has decayed even more] it is called memory (p. 133).
Of the Consequence or Train of Imaginations: we have no imagination
whereof we never had the like before in our senses . All fancies are
motions within us, relics of those made in the sense. (p. 137).

Thomas (2008) suggests that Hobbes images might not be mental

pictures in a robust sense. Hobbes differentiates between unguided
and regulated thought (p. 137) but expresses regulated thought in
terms of imagination of causes and effects (p 138). He lifts up
Aristotles sense of imagined outcomes leading directly to action in
Chapter 6 (Passions):
Passions: voluntary motion to move any of our limbs, in such
manner as is first fancied in our minds (which) fancy is but the relics
of the same motion, remaining after sense imagination is the first
interval beginning of all voluntary motion (p. 148). Will is the last
appetite in deliberating (p. 154).

John Locke
John Locke in Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690/1939)
continued this tradition in Book II (Of Ideas) Chapter X (Of
Retention):
Our ideas being nothing but actual perceptions in the mind, which cease
to be anything when there is no perception of them, this laying up of our

B. FAW
ideas in the repository of the memory signifies no more but this that
the mind has a power, in many cases, to revive perceptions which it has
once had, with this additional perception annexed to them, that it has
had them before (p. 276).

Locke does, famously, add to sensations the mental power of reflection in Book II (Of Ideas in Chapter XI (Discerning) and Chapter
XII (Complex Ideas)
Discerning: these very operations of the mind about ideas received
from sensations are themselves, when reflected on, another set of ideas,
derived from that other source of our knowledge which I call reflection
(p. 282).
Complex Ideas: [complex ideas are] made by the mind out of simple
ones (p. 283).

David Hume
David Hume in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
(1748/1939), Section II (Origin of Ideas) and Section III (Association
of Ideas) tried to tighten up Lockes very loose (p. 596) confounding
of sensations and ideas and then to spell out laws of how ideas combine themselves. Italics within quotes are from Hume.
Origin: Impressions are distinguished from ideas, which are the less
lively perceptions, of which we are conscious, when we reflect on any
of those sensations or movements (p. 593). All our ideas or more feeble
perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones (p. 594).
[To understand] any meaning or idea, we need but inquire, from what
impression is that supposed idea derived? (p. 596).
Association: There appear to be only three principles of connection
among ideas, namely, resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and
cause or effect (p. 597).

Edward Titchener
This British Empiricist strand is more recently seen in the founder of
American Structuralism, British-born Edward Titchener. In his 1909
Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes in
a section on Imagery and Sensationalism (pagination from long
selections in Mandler & Mandler, 1964), Titchener dealt with the
philosophical sensationalism of the British philosophers we have
been treating, citing Baldwins definition for sensationalism (p. 172):
[Sensationalism is] the theory that all knowledge originates in sensations; that all cognitions, even reflective ideas and so-called intuitions,
can be traced back to elementary sensations.

CONFLICTING INTUITIONS & MENTAL IMAGERY

Titchener chided the philosophical sensationalists for not distinguishing the theory of knowledge from the theory of thought (p
173). Titchener separated these philosophers and his own experimental psychological approach on this point:
Lockes ideaswere meanings, thought-tokens, bits of knowledge; the
sensations and ideas of modern psychology are Erlebnisse, data of
immediate experience (p. 173).

As historian of psychology, Tom Leahey (2004), states: Titchener

built his psychology on the premise that the mind was made up of
sensations or images of sensation and nothing else (p. 245).
Titchener knew Galtons mental imagery research (which had
found many cases of non-imagers) and placed himself within Galtons
spectra in Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought
Processes (Mandler & Mandler, 1964). He described his own imagery
abilities:
My visual imagery voluntarily aroused as for Galtons breakfast table
test, is extremely vivid, though it seems bodiless and papery when
compared with direct perception. I have never, so far as I am aware,
experienced a visual hallucinations; I have no number-form; I know
nothing of coloured hearing . On the other hand, my mind, in its ordinary operations, is a fairly complete picture gallery not of finished
paintings, but of impressionist notes (p. 167) My mind is by no means
exclusively, is not even predominantly, of the visual type. I have a
great deal of auditory imagery; I have also a great deal of kinaesthetic
imagery (p. 171).

In a section on The Problem of Meaning, Titchener not only identified ideas with images, but challenged the Wurzburg scholars findings that their introspections found even minute imageless holes in
their streams of images. Everyone (except Galton) seemed to assume
that what is in ones own mind is in everybodys mind!
I found not the faintest trace of an image-less apprehension (p. 181).
What I have personally found does not, so far, shake my faith in sensationalism (p. 182). I have turned round, time and time again, upon
consciousnesses like doubt, hesitation, belief, assent, trying to remember, having a thing on my tongues tip, and I have not been able to discover the imageless processes (p. 183).

Intuition B: Nobody Thinks With Images

The massive shift in early experimental psychology, from the Britishempiricist-inspired paradigm of introspection to the introspectiveantagonistic paradigm of behaviourism, may also have sprung from
the same philosophical assumption that ones own mental intuition is

B. FAW

representative of homo sapiens mentalis. I say this because it may be

that John Watson was a non-imager such as me. In his most-famous
1913 article, Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, he penned
these very ambiguous words in a footnote:
There is need of questioning more and more the existence of what psychology calls imagery. Until a few years ago I thought that centrally
aroused visual sensations were as clear as those peripherally aroused. I
had never accredited myself with any other kind. However, closer
examination leads me to deny in my own case the presence of imagery
in the Galtonian sense . Imagery becomes a mental luxury (even if it
really exists) without any functional significance (p. 175).

In his second-most-famous 1913 article, Image and Affection in

Behavior, Watson (1913b) believes the centrally aroused sensation or image if thought goes on in terms of centrally aroused
sensations (p. 421) to be the most serious obstacle in psychology
moving from the structuralism of Titchener to behaviourism. Then he
states as his principal contention that there are no centrally initiated
processes (p. 423), a claim which he footnoted as follows:
I may have to grant a few sporadic cases of imagery to him who will not
be otherwise convinced, but I insist that the images of such a one are
sporadic, and as unnecessary to his well-being and well-thinking as a
few hairs more or less on his head.

A few paragraphs later Watson wrote:

It is implied in my words that there exists or ought to exist a method of
observing implicit behavior [such as thought and images]. There is none
at present. The larynx, I believe is the seat of most of the phenomena
(p. 424).

His last sentence is amazing, suggesting that inner-speech is the root

of visual imagery as well as of verbal thought! With these two 1913
articles, Watson began slaying the dragon of Introspective Experimental Psychology.
Watson continued to define Behaviourism. In Chapter 1 of the
greatly-revised 1930 version of his 192425 Behaviorism (1930/
1970), he made several statements about consciousness and imagery.
Italics and curved parentheses e.g., (introspection) within
quotes are from Watson. The opening italicized phrases are the titles
of his various sections.
Old and New Psychology Contrasted: The behaviorist holds that
belief in the existence of consciousness goes back to the ancient days of
superstition and magic (p. 2).

CONFLICTING INTUITIONS & MENTAL IMAGERY

Example of Such Concepts: [Wundt] substituted the term consciousness

for the soul. Consciousness is not quite so unobservable as soul. We
observe it by peeking in suddenly and catching it unawares as it were
(introspection) (p. 4). In the analyses of consciousness made by certain
of the psychologists you find such elements as sensations and their
ghosts, the images (p. 4).
Advent of Behaviorists: [The behaviorist] dropped from his scientific
vocabulary all subjective terms such as sensation, perception, image,
desire, purpose, and even thinking and emotion as they were subjectively defined (p. 6).
Behaviorists Platform: saying is doing that is, behaving. Speaking overtly or to ourselves (thinking) is just as objective a type of behavior as baseball (p. 6).
Does this Behavioristic Approach Leave Anything out of Psychology?:
[There is a natural inclination to ask]: Do I not forget things and remember things, imagine things, have visual images and auditory images of
things I once have seen and heard? (p. 9).
Is Behaviorism an Actual System of Psychology?: Psychology can do
without the terms mind and consciousness, indeed it can find no
objective evidence for their existence . (p. 18).

Watson also picks up his inner-speech theory in Behaviorism

(1930/1970), in chapters titled X: Talking and Thinking and XI: Do
We Always Think in Words? In Talking and Thinking he wrote that:
What the psychologists have hitherto called thought is nothing but talking to ourselves (p. 238).

While admitting that his earlier writings could be misconstrued as

suggesting that the laryngeal movement as such played the predominating role in thought (p 238), he still maintained that:
the muscular habits learned in overt speech are responsible for implicit
or internal speech (thought) . After our overt speech habits are
formed, we are constantly talking to ourselves (thought) (p. 239).

And yet thought does not necessarily involve words.

Talking and Thinking: The term thinking should cover all word behavior of whatever kind that goes on subvocally (p. 243).
Do We Always Think in Words? Manual and visceral organizations are
operative in thinking even when no verbal processes are present it
shows that we could still think in some sort of way even if we had no
words! (pp. 2678). We can say that thinking is largely subvocal talking provided we hasten to explain that it can occur without words
(p. 268).

10

B. FAW

Much of the formal study of imagery in particular and issues in consciousness in general retreated from the frontiers of psychological
research with Watsons coup. In a provocative JCS article sub-titled
J.B. Watsons Rejection of Mental Images (2007), David Berman
and William Lyons survey a number of takes on Watsons 1913 rejection of his own visual imaging abilities, and conclude that Watson was
a good visual imager but that he developed an ideological blindness
to mental images, showing a refusal or lack of desire any longer to
admit a capacity (p. 20).
While Berman and Lyons might be correct that Watsons behaviorism led to his rejection of imagery, it might be the other way around:
his paucity of visual imagery might have led to his fervent behaviourism. Nigel Thomas (2008) asserts in his Imagery article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that Watson questioned the very
existence of imagery, and that behaviourist psychology led to
iconophobia, a marked skepticism about imagery (if not its existence, at least its psychological importance) among psychologists
and philosophers (section 1.1). Instead of weighing into the details, I
will follow an insight by historian of psychology Thomas Leahey
(personal communication) and suggest that Watson might have been a
strong auditory but weak visual imager, and that he mainly took part
in auditory imagery experiments several years before he became a
behaviourist.
Thankfully, the resolution of this issue of Watsons imaging ability
is not crucial to my thesis. What I contend is the probability that strong
imagers led philosophical and scientific psychology into introspective
paths and the possibility that some poor imagers led it into behavioural paths.
Intuition C: At Least Some People Think Without Images
The contemporary denial or ignoring of natural-non-imagers, which I
referenced in the opening paragraphs, is surprising because the phenomenon was reported prominently by the founders of the empirical
study of mental imagery: Sir Francis Galton (1880, 1883) and George
Betts (1909).

Francis Galton
Francis Galton (1880, 1883) launched the comparative study of mental imaging abilities with a series of open-ended questions on mental
sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and bodily sensations, evoked
by being asked to remember a recent dining experience: recall

CONFLICTING INTUITIONS & MENTAL IMAGERY

11

Titcheners reference to Galtons breakfast table test and Watsons

reference to imagery in the Galtonian sense. Galton found that the
majority of the men of science (1880, p. 302) whom he first queried
seemed to be non-imagers. Galtons more extensive surveying gave a
much more modest (and frequently replicated) estimate that about
5% responded to the request to form a mental picture with something
as follows:

I recollect the breakfast table, but do not see it.

It is only as a figure of speech that I can describe my recollection

of a sense as a mental image which I can see with my minds

eye.

Dim, poor definition; could not sketch from it. I have a difficulty
in seeing two images together.

No power of visualizing. Between sleeping and wakingsome

remarkable senses have occasionally presented themselves, but
I cannot recall them when awake with eyes open.

Very occasionally an object or image will recall itself, but even

then it is more like a generalized image than an individual

image.

These are in sharp contrast to responses from the set where the faculty is very high, such as:
The image once seen is perfectly clear and bright. The mental image
appears to correspond in all respects with reality. I think it is as clear as
the actual scene.

Galtons own visual imaging abilities were very impoverished,

according to his own report: I visualize with effort before I
thought of carefully trying, I would have emphatically declared that
my field of view in the dark was essentially of a uniform black .
(1883, p. 114). Even after practicing visual imaging, Galtons images
disappear out of sight and memory the instance I begin to think about
anything . Presumably his paucity of imagery and his acknowledgement that others had good imagery spurred his research. This
is a sign of a great scholar: he would have never launched mental
imagery research if he had assumed that everyone had squat imagery!

William James
While presumably not one of Galtons queried men of science,
William James wrote of his own poor visual imagery in his hugely
influential Principles of Psychology (1890/1981), stating that he can

12

B. FAW

seldom call to mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must trace the letter by running my mental eye over its
contour in order that the image of it shall have any distinctness at all
(p. 708).

George Betts
George Betts (1909) took Galtons responses and created 7-point
scales from perfectly clear and as vivid as the actual experience to
no image present at all, you only knowing that you are thinking of the
object. From this he found various percentages of non-imagers, ranging from 2% of his college students to 19% of psychologists.
Donald Hebb and others
Donald Hebb helped launch the modern cognitive-era study of mental
imagery in a seminal article in 1968, in which he urged studying mental imagery in ways that correlate self-report with objective tasks.
Subsequent research by many notable researchers such as Akhter
Ahsen, Martha Farah, Robert Finke, Steven Kosslyn, Robert
Kunzendorf, D.F. Marks, Stuart McKelvie, Alan Paivio, Alan Richardson, and P.W. Sheehan has become more quantitative, focusing
on objective tests of imaging ability, in addition to, or rather than self
report.
The Search for Normal Individual Differences
Imagery Factors
Most mental imaging research assesses imaging abilities on a continuum from poor to excellent imagers. These scales find that the mean is
much closer to the vivid end of the continuum, with very few people
on the non-vivid end. This skewing seems to have been universally
found from Betts (1909) through Richardson (1994) and my own surveys where I have found up to 30% of 2500 responders marking
the best imagery option but only 25% marking the worst.
Imagery tests measure imaging vividness in several sensory modes,
such as visual, auditory, touch, motor, taste, smell, and organic
(bodily-sensation). Consistently significant positive correlations
among all of the imaging modalities suggest a unified trait. However,
the fact that these correlations tend to be moderate rather than high,
and the fact that there seem to be fairly consistent differences in the
vividness levels of different imagery modalities (e.g., that people tend
to be better in, say, visual than in smell imagery), suggest independent

CONFLICTING INTUITIONS & MENTAL IMAGERY

13

imagery modality abilities. Betts (1909) found correlations between

sub-scales ranging from 0.40 (between visual and smell) to 0.78
(between smell and taste). Factor analysis has suggested that the two
mechanical modalities (touch and motor) and the two chemical senses
(smell and taste) may constitute separate factors (Richardson, 1994).

Faws Galton- & Betts-Profiles

Since 1993 I have devised and with my North Carolina and Georgia
students have administered four different Galton- and Bettsderived mental imagery profiles to some 2,500 people. We have also
found (along with Galton and Betts) in each set of surveying, some
2-5% with extremely low imaging scores. Our most recent profile,
given to 750 people, showed the following percentages for the lowest
one or two categories:

When you try to form a mental picture, it is usually: (no image,

vague & dim, somewhat clear, very clear): No image: 2.1%

Vague & Dim: 8.2% (previous surveys claiming no visual imagery: 2.7%, 2.2%, 2.3%)

Is your visual imagery more like seeing (a blank wall; photos or

slides; movie; mix of photos & movies) Blank wall: 4.6%;

Photos or slides: 19.7%

When you try to form a mental sound, it is usually: (no image,

vague & dim, somewhat clear, very clear) No image: 2% Vague

& dim: 14.1% (previous surveys claiming no auditory imagery:
815%)

When you read a magazine or book, do you: (silently think the

words, hear own voice; a voice not recognized, different

voices) Silently think the words: 18.9%

When you are thinking about a song, do you: (silently hum it,
faintly hear music, clearly hear) Silently hum: 12.1% faintly
hear: 17%

I would like to share a few of the written comments that persons

have written at the end of taking some of our surveys comments
that rival Galtons in terms of poor or non-imaging ability.

I know the person is there but I have a hard time seeing him,

esp. Details of the face. It is more the actions and events that I
am most aware of actions, events, responses, words, feelings,
but not actual forms or pictures. I have a very difficult time picturing anyone or anything. I can picture geometric objects better

14

B. FAW

than people. I dream in ideas rather than pictures. Im just aware

that it is happening; neither in black and white or color.

I can picture what it would look like or I know what it looks like,

but I cant actually see an image in my head. Thinking about and

I think I can see it but I dont. Dont really ever remember
dreaming except when dream of incidents in my life or of something that happened to me as a child or that will happen to me in
the future. Usually just wake up with feelings or am disoriented.

I just get a sense of the object. A feeling that I dont need to see it

I already know it. Just now beginning to realize that some people can actually see things in their minds so to speak. I wonder
how vivid it is. I always thought mental picture was just a
phrase. When they image an apple what is the background? Is it
black or is the apple on a table.

No visual image at all. Sort of a non-sensory feel of the object,

action, etc.

Think of object remember parts of object and try to form picture, but doesnt work.

When I try to form an image nothing happens. It is just blank.

Never aware of use of mental imagery in myself or in others.
When I am asked to form an image and fill out a pamphlet in a

few minutes I dont see much of anything If I can close my

eyes and think then I see clearly. Sometimes pictures are clear
I could touch them Sometimes just an outline.

Mental pictures come to me, vaguely but in color, but I cannot

control them or call them up intentionally.

These are, again, in sharp contrast with statements from persons

checking off much higher imaging self ratings. These latter include
one student who wrote that he has walked into a wall more than once,
because he imaged a doorway there. Probably our most poignant comment came from a 40-something colleague of mine, who had become
totally blind some 10 years earlier. After having been in his present
office for several months he experienced a sudden moment in which
he seemed to be able to see everything in his office, clearly and
brightly. For a moment he thought he had regained his sight! Then he
realized sadly that his tactile and spatial acquaintance with things in
his office came together in vivid visual imagery. A minute later he was
blind again.

CONFLICTING INTUITIONS & MENTAL IMAGERY

15

Eidetic Imagery: Vividness, Accuracy, and Control

One of the referees for this article helpfully suggested that I raise the
issue of eidetic or photographic imagery in regard to the student
who has walked into walls and my blind colleague. Eidetic, of
course, comes from the Greek eidetikos/eidos: form or shape, which
relates to the eidola-copy-theories of Empedocles referenced earlier.
Eidetic images are defined as visual impressions recalled vividly
and readily reproducible with great accuracy (Websters, 1991). Note
three characteristics of eidetic images: vividness, readily reproducible, and great accuracy. If Empedocles were correct that eidola were
actual copies of the objects arriving at the eye, one might assume that
everyone would be eidetic!
Classic treatments of eidetic imagery relate to cases whereby a person can look at a cluster of 10,000 dots and retain that accurately
enough to form a stereogram when looking later at another cluster of
10,000 dots presumably able to superimpose the eidetic image onto
the new perceptual image. Based on extensive research with eidetic
imagers, R.N. Haber (1979) maintained that eidetic imagery is qualitatively different from normal imagery and very rare. Many eidetic
imagery researchers also maintain that children tend more toward
eidetic powers than adults. Many contemporary researchers of general
mental imagery abilities remain agnostic or divided in both the
qualitative-distinctiveness and the age claims (Kunzendorf & Sheikh,
1990; Finke, 1993; Richardson, 1994).
Robert Kunzendorf (1990) has studied a number of very vivid
imagers whom he calls eidekers. My impression is that they would
not be eidekers in the classic sense with the seeming amazing accuracy and reproducibility but clearly persons with very vivid imagery. My 1997 article reviewed some of Kunzendorfs remarkable
findings of primary visual area (V1) and even electro-retinogram and
autonomic activation in vivid, but not in non-vivid, imagers.
Researchers in general imaging abilities have often dissociated the
dimensions of vividness and control (Gordon, 1949; Richardson,
1994). In Thomas (2008) terms, vividness would be a measure of imagery experiences, while control would be a measure of imagery
representations or processes.
Richardson (1994) found a mean correlation (Pearsons r) of 0.36
between measures of vividness and control in normal individuals
over 12 studies. My own surveys found even higher correlations
between vividness and control: r=0.44 with an n=264; and r=0.75
with an n=629). This suggests a positive moderate-to-high

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B. FAW

relationship between these two factors. Some poor visual imagers

whom I have studied say that they experience brief spontaneous
images but can neither hold or transform them, nor generate them
at will.
This dissociation can be seen neurologically. Russell Brains (1954;
also in Faw, 1997) case 2 was a man, who, due to a frontal concussion,
lost controlled-, but not spontaneous-imaging abilities: he could visualize things only if they come to me as an impression, but I cant
make them come.
The eidetic imagery characteristic of readily reproducible seems
to be an extreme case of control. The eidetic characteristic of great
accuracy seems to be a matter of memory. Going back to my
wall-walking-into student and greatly disappointed blind colleague,
they seem to have very vivid imagery, but not necessarily great control nor accurate eidetic memory.

Authenticity of Self Report?

Disputing starkly-contrasting reports
One has to assume a superior external perspective from which to dispute such extreme differences in self report. There are far more than
linguistic or folk-psychological-terminological distinctions
between the person who reports: just now beginning to realize that
some people can actually see things in their minds so to speak, and
my blind colleague who was fooled by the vivid visual imaginal experience of his un-seen office! It does makes skeptical sense to question
whether people filling out a 5- or 7-scale survey all mean the same by
vague and dim! But it seems untoward to dispute such strong statements of mental imaging abilities and the lack thereof as seen in
the self-reports that Galton and I and many others have elicited.

Waking vs dreaming imaging

While I have done a little dream work both in terms of sleep labs
and in terms of eliciting dream reports I am puzzled by the general
assumption that everybody dreams. Even Aristotle and Locke
seemed to accept the reports of some who claimed not to. Sleep
researchers sometimes make such a statement even after finding consistent lack of REM-type dreaming in some subjects.
Our research suggests that there are wakeful non-imagers who have
vivid dreams (such as me) and there appear to be both wakeful
imagers and non-imagers who claim not to have REM-type dreams.
And yet, it has still surprised me that we find only moderate positive

CONFLICTING INTUITIONS & MENTAL IMAGERY

17

correlations between self reports of waking and dreaming. For

instance, in one sample of 516 subjects we had several moderate positive correlations:

Freq of imaging in color w/ freq of dreams in color: r=0.49

Only image in black & white w/ freq of dream in black and
white: r=0.51

Imaging visual vividness & dream in color: r=0.15

Waking Imagery movement & dreaming movement: r=0.24
Interestingly, the two factors that together define lucid dreaming (I
have dreams in which I am aware I am dreaming and I have dreams I
feel I am partially controlling) correlated 0.50 in frequency. In Faw
(1997) I posed several possible mechanisms that might account for a
seeming double dissociation between waking and sleeping imagery.
The jury seems to be out on that issue I believe this is a crucial but
unrecognized question for consciousness science.

Self reports and objective tasks

However, self reports are quite limited! So, in addition to subjective
self report surveys, we have run a dozen or so experiments with more
objective mental imagery variables: (1) comparing the use of imagery
vs. non-imagery strategies and/or (2) comparing high- vs. low-reporting imagers in cognitive tasks such as memory for picture detail,
paired associate word memory, serial-position-effect word remembering, puzzle solving, story comprehension; and various forms of success and failure mental practice such as piano sight reading, basket
ball, and beanbag toss. (Yes, beanbag toss I kid you not!)
Consistent with other researchers, I have found strong robust
effects from instructing subjects to use imagery strategies (versus
silent verbal repetition), but only modest correlations (yet sometimes
with significant t-test or chi-square differences) between reported
phenomenal mental imagery and the representational use of mental
imagery in these tasks. Researchers such as Kunzendorf and Kosslyn,
who have been able to test a number of non-imagers and presumablysuper imagers, find much stronger effects. My 1997 article reviews
some of Kunzendorfs remarkable findings of V-1 and even electroretinogram and autonomic activation in vivid, but not in non-vivid,
imagers what he calls eidekers! It is my intuition that those with
even mediocre imaging ability will be able to use it for visual memory
tasks about as well as those with vivid imagery. The really important

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B. FAW

comparisons are between persons who report no or very-poor imagery

and anyone else!
However, what is usually concluded in articles and talks is that
there are only modest correlations between self-reported imagery
abilities and performance on visual memory tasks, with the implication that this is an indictment against the validity of self-report as
by Eric Schwitzgebel in various writings, talks, and in personal
conversation. This is consistent with the sentiment whereby neuropsychological reports of clinical imaging loss assume that success in
such objective tasks as describing from the memory the shape and
colour of giraffes is sufficient evidence of the presence of subjective
mental imagery.
I have published a review of brain mechanisms in mental imagery
abilities (Faw, 1997), in which I argue that the mechanisms involved
in objective or representational evidence of mental imaging abilities
actually partially dissociate from those responsible for phenomenal
experience and/or report, thus necessitating on conceptual grounds a
modest positive correlation between the two. We will explore some of
that evidence in the next section.

Looking at Non-Normal Clinical Non-Imagers

Not only are there natural non-imagers, there are also clinical
non-imagers. A few of these clinical non-imagers seem to become
essentially like natural non-imagers. In these few cases, people, who
because of brain damage lose the ability to form mental images,
remain capable of perceptual and memory tasks normally associated
with imagery, e.g., recognizing objects and being able to describe or
draw them from memory: Brain (1941; 1954); Nielsen (1955); Basso,
Bisiach & Luzzatti, 1980; Pena-Casanova et al., 1985).
During the Q&A of a speech by Herbert Simon at an American Psychological Association conference a decade ago, I asked Simon what
he could say about brain mechanisms involved in mental imaging
not much! I commenced to suggest some of the mechanisms. Right
after my exchange with Simon, another psychologist came over to
where I was standing and told me about how she had lost visual imaging ability from an auto accident in the past year. For months she
found it hard to understand some of what she heard because she could
not convert the words into pictures. Over a 6 months time she learned
to encode all she heard through auditory imagery and regained comprehension without visual imagery. People in this category along
with natural non-imagers such as myself can do reasonably well on

CONFLICTING INTUITIONS & MENTAL IMAGERY

19

many of the objective tests of mental imagery loss, such as describing the colors and physical characteristics of common objects and
animals.
One of the referees for this paper suggested that I might use Levine
et al. (1982) at this point to strengthen my case. It shows the reverse
condition from the psychologists tale to me at APA. Levine and colleagues patient EB could understand heard-speech or read-words
only when they triggered visual images of their referents. Thus, in
slowly reading the sentence, the boy threw the dog the bone, EB
developed a mental image of a boy throwing a dog while reading the
first five words, but was unable to transform that into the correct
image while reading the last two words, and thus was unable to understand the full sentence. EB repeatedly stated that he was unable to
mentally speak to himself.
More frequently, persons losing previous visual or auditory waking
and/or dream imagery suffer severe corresponding perceptual and
sensory-memory loss often with very specific temporal and/or
parietal lesions. They have Charcot-Wilbrand Syndrome, first
identified by Charcot in 1883, and then named by Critchley in 1953
(Critchley, 1953).
Even more remarkable is the fact that some brain-damage cases
show perceptual losses without imaging losses (Nielsen, 1955; PenaCasanova et al., 1985; Behrmann et al., 1992). This includes the
patient MD (Jankowiak et al., 1992), who could no longer recognize
objects that he saw (object agnosia), but, when asked, was able to
draw complex objects from memory (suggesting intact mental imaging abilities), but then could not recognize what he drew! Still another
patient (Trojano & Grossi, 1992) could not recognize objects nor
draw them without seeing them, but claimed that he could generate
visual mental images of them. In such cases, Martha Farah (Farah &
Levine, 1988; Farah, 1984) urges neurologists not to honor their
claims presumably not to believe their reports. In Faw (1997), I portrayed this as the mediational-behaviourism bias mentioned above!
It would seem to me that the most scientifically-sound approach
would be to take their self report seriously unless you find evidence of
frontal lobe damage and anosagnosia (lack of knowledge of what ails
you)! Take the psychologist who spoke to me after the Herbert Simon
talk: at one time she had vivid conscious visual imagery that helped
her understand speech. Now she doesnt! She was even astute enough
to report the recovery process of moving from being an imagery-decoder to being an auditory-decoder of language. Is there any
scientific or philosophical reason to question her self-report in that?

20

B. FAW

While most patients are not that articulate, persons who could not recognize objects nor draw them from memory but claim to be able to
generate visual mental images of objects may point us to profound
double-dissociations between perception and imagery, if we are open
to the possibility that they know that they are still forming the kind of
mental images that they could form before. It is NOT a scientific
approach to distrust all self report. Taking self report seriously is
NOT a shameful thing in hard science! It often tells us much more than
purely behavioural measures.

Subliminal Mental Imagery?

Because there are natural non-imagers and even some clinical
non-imagers who can still perform (if less well) the tasks usually
related to imagery, such as recognition, describing perceptual attributes from memory, and drawing from memory, it seems to be a mistake to say that they lack all mental imaging mechanisms. Instead, it
might be that they form some type of entry level representation
(Goldenberg, 1992) or neurophysiological schemas which do not
themselves enter consciousness (Brain, 1956), or have propositional but not analogue retrieval (Basso et al., 1980), or form images
at a subliminal levelincapable of conscious retrieval and reporting
(Botez et al, 1985); or form images but do not recognize them (Hebb,
1968).
All of these formulations distinguish between some sort of subliminal imaging ability and the forming of supra-liminal or conscious
images. I see at least three alternate solutions to the dilemma: either
(1) describing and drawing objects from memory does not require the
generation of mental images; or (2) describing and drawing objects
from memory requires generation of a subliminal but not a conscious
imaging process; or (3) describing and drawing objects from memory
requires the generating of mental images, but not the detecting of
those generated mental images. Persons such as me may thus generate
subliminal images (#2) or generate but not consciously detect the
images we generate (#3).
This idea of subliminal imaging ability which carries much of
the cognitive processing that imagery is thought to carry: minus recall
of fine detail seems to be similar to a recent move reviewed by
Thomas (2008) where imagery is referred to as a type of underlying
representation rather than a specific form of subjective experience.
Again, Faw (1997) gives an outline of a brain model of mental imaging abilities and deals with some of these issues.

CONFLICTING INTUITIONS & MENTAL IMAGERY

21

Conflicting Intuitions Continue

I would like to close where I began, on a personal more accurately:
interpersonal note. As indicated in my first section, there are many
contemporary imagery researchers who do not know that there are
card-carrying non-imagers, or ignore them, or dismiss their claims. I
have gotten challenges from both psychologists and philosophers as
to the accuracy of my own intuition that, as far as I know, I have never
had wakeful mental imagery in any sensory modality, but that I have
vivid, frequent, and occasionally-lucid dreams. One psychologist,
who does most of his empirical research on mental imagery with the
blind (!), took me outside at the end of a North Carolina Cognition
Group conference, told me to close my eyes, gave me instructions to
walk so-many paces straight, then left, then right, etc., and then asked
me with my eyes still shut to point back to where I had come.
When I pointed fairly accurately, he exclaimed, see, you can image!
He would not believe me that I saw nothing but my gray eye lids.
However, it is this kind of experience that convinces me that I have
normal spatial imagery abilities!
Even Stephen Kosslyn, probably the best imagery researcher of our
day, disputed part of my claim when I cornered him after his talk at the
International Congress of Psychology in Montreal in 1996. He could
not understand how I could tell him that limes are green and lemons
are yellow and elephants have long trunks if my claims were correct
(in his Q&A) that I cannot form mental images. He did not contest the
existence of non-imagers, but my alleged abilities did not seem to correspond with my condition. In contrast, I have met a couple of
Atlanta-based cognitive psychologists who have identified to me that
they are also non-imagers and that they are also drawn to the study of
mental imagery: perhaps to see how the other 97.3% live!
Interestingly, I have had a warm response from philosophers with
whom I have been in dialogue about this. Natika Newton and Ralph
Ellis questioned my intuitions several years ago at the Southern
(USA) Society for Philosophy and Psychology when I mentioned my
non-imaging in a paper. They raised a lot of questions about my
non-imaging, but then concluded something like the following: well,
we must assume that your intuition is true for you. Newtons entire
approach is based on an Aristotelian assumption that all thought
involves imagery although some verbal thought retains only remnants of its imaginal foundation. Far from rejecting my conflicting
intuition, Newton, Ellis, Owen Flanagan, William Robinson, Bill
Lycan, and many others have given me good dialogue about this.

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B. FAW

This clash of intuitions has led to some very fruitful development of

my thinking on mental imagery. The key point is that I (and many of
Galtons and my own non-imager respondents) would describe some
of my non-imaging experiences more as subliminal-imaging rather
than as propositional thinking. When I am trying to picture the face
of my wife (now of 48 years!), for example, I try to remember seeing it
but dont see it. It is almost as if I try to draw her profile, nose, and
mouth on water sort of outlining it but leaving no visual trace; reminiscent of William James self report. This is a very different experience than trying to recall semantic facts about her, such as her age,
height, etc which is probably how I can recall that lemons are yellow
and that trunks have elephants, or whatever! In fact, I come pretty
close to buying Natikas basic premise that all thought involves imagery although some verbal thought retains only remnants of its
imaginal foundation. Except, that for some of us the imagery is subliminal sort of quasi-there. And that is my intuition!
This article demonstrates the value of peer review. It is more
comprehensive and clearer because of two anonymous reviewers. It
contains most of their suggestions. The rest must await a subsequent
article or book.

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Paper received December 2008.