Autism and aphantasia: Investigating the presence of a specific cognitive profile through case studies.

Mental imagery is defined as the evocation of a representation and its associated sensory information without a direct external stimulus (Pearson et al., 2015). Manifestations of mental imagery can be heterogenous from one individual to another. For some, visual mental imagery is exceptionally strong and almost as vivid as real perception (i.e. hyperphantasia), while for others, it is very blurry or even completely absent (i.e. aphantasia) (Zeman et al., 2015, 2016, 2020). Autism is a condition in which a superior use of visual representation has been reported compared to typical individuals (Bled et al., 2021), thus suggesting a hyperphantasic profile. However, a recent study has suggested a link between aphantasia and autistic traits (Dance et al., 2021; King et al., 2024). The aim of this exploratory study was to evaluate more precisely the presence and the characteristics of aphantasia in autistic individuals.
While visual mental imagery has long been considered unitary, some studies have described two distinct types of visual mental imagery, “object” imagery and “spatial” imagery (Kozhevnikov et al., 2002; Blazhenkova & Kozhevnikov, 2009; Kolloffel, 2012). Object mental imagery enables the creation of detailed and vivid representations of objects and scenes, including colors, shapes, and intricate details (Blajenkova, Kozhevnikov, & Motes, 2006). In contrast, spatial imagery involves schematic representations of objects, patterns, and their spatial relationships, allowing the visualization of spatial relationships and dynamic transformations of elements (Blazhenkova & Kozhevnikov, 2009)…