Aphantasia does not affect veridical and false memory: Evidence from the DRM paradigm

Aphantasia is defined as the reduced capacity to form mental images voluntarily. Previous research provided mixed evidence regarding the effect this individual variation may have on other areas of cognition and different aspects of memory. This study investigated how a reduction in mental imagery affects verbal memory with a specific focus on false memory generation by comparing the performance of aphantasic and non-aphantasic control participants in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Correlational analyses revealed that higher visual imagery ability was weakly associated with better free recall performance but also more extra-list recall intrusions. However, contrary to expectations, the experimental findings demonstrated no differential effect of aphantasia on veridical or false memory in either free recall or recognition suggesting that aphantasia does not protect against verbal false memory generation. Future work should consider the effect of aphantasia on false memory generation using visual variants of the DRM task.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2025.103888