Oct 6, 2026·Special Population & Related Conditions
Aphantasia and IQ: Does a Blind Mind's Eye Affect Intelligence?
Aphantasia IQ studies find no general deficit: people who cannot picture images score in the normal range on IQ tests and solve spatial tasks in other ways.
Dr. Russell T. WarneChief Scientist
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Aphantasia does not lower IQ. In the studies that have given standard intelligence tests to people who cannot form mental pictures, their scores fall in the normal to above-average range, and they solve most visual and spatial problems about as accurately as people with vivid imagery.
Aphantasia is the absence, or near absence, of voluntary visual imagery: when asked to picture a friend's face or a sunset, a person with aphantasia sees nothing in the mind's eye. This page covers what aphantasia is and how common it is, what IQ studies have found, how people without imagery handle spatial tasks, where real differences do appear, and why the questionnaire used to identify aphantasia is not an intelligence test.
What aphantasia is and how common it is
The trait has a long history and a new name. In 1880 Francis Galton asked people to rate the "illumination, definition and coloring" of their breakfast table as they had sat down to it that morning, and found that for some respondents the powers of visualization were "zero". The idea was then largely neglected until the neurologist Adam Zeman and colleagues described a man, known as MX, who had abruptly lost his visual imagery yet performed normally on standard tests of perception, visual imagery and visual memory. In 2015 Zeman, Dewar and Della Sala coined the term "aphantasia" for people who describe a lifelong absence of imagery.
Estimates of how common it is depend on the cut-off. Dance and colleagues screened two samples of about 500 people each with the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire and found aphantasia in 3.9% overall. A meta-analytic estimate by Monzel and colleagues, based on 3,543 participants, put the figure at 3.5% to 4.8%. The most extreme form, with the lowest possible questionnaire score, is rarer, at about 0.7% in a community sample reported by Zeman's group. The opposite extreme, unusually vivid imagery, is called "hyperphantasia".
Aphantasia is a variation in experience. Monzel and colleagues tested it against the criteria for a mental disorder and concluded that its effect on daily life and distress was too weak to justify that label, although a minority of people with aphantasia do report distress.
What the IQ studies show
Only a few studies have measured IQ directly, and their samples are small. The most detailed is Milton and colleagues' 2021 study at the University of Exeter, which gave the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence or the full Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale to 24 people with aphantasia, 25 with hyperphantasia and 20 controls with midrange imagery.
The mean IQ scores were:
• Aphantasia: 115.5 (SD 12.5).
• Midrange imagery (controls): 110.0 (SD 11.4).
• Hyperphantasia: 106.3 (SD 4.5).
The aphantasia group scored significantly higher than the hyperphantasia group, and no other pair of groups differed significantly. These averages should not be read as evidence that aphantasia raises IQ. Volunteers who contact researchers about their imagery are a self-selected group, and all three groups in this study scored above the population average of 100.
Other research points the same way. Pounder and colleagues matched 20 people with aphantasia to 20 typical imagers on age and IQ and gave them neuropsychological tasks thought to depend on imagery, finding "only minimal differences" between the groups. In a questionnaire study of about 2,000 people with aphantasia and 200 with hyperphantasia, Zeman and colleagues found aphantasia was associated with scientific and mathematical occupations and hyperphantasia with creative professions. Occupation is a loose proxy for ability, yet the pattern sits poorly with the idea that lacking imagery limits reasoning.
Spatial reasoning without mental pictures
The obvious worry is that aphantasia should hurt the visual and spatial items found on most IQ tests, such as mental rotation and pattern puzzles. The evidence suggests that spatial thinking is largely preserved even when the pictures are missing. Our article on visual-spatial reasoning and why it shows up on an IQ test describes the kinds of items involved.
In Keogh and Pearson's 2018 study, people with aphantasia showed almost no sign of sensory imagery on an objective binocular rivalry task, yet rated their spatial imagery above average. Bainbridge and colleagues asked 61 people with aphantasia and matched controls to draw real-world scenes from memory. The aphantasia group drew fewer objects and used less colour, but placed what they did draw with spatial accuracy equal to the controls and made significantly fewer memory errors.
Working memory tells a similar story. Keogh, Wicken and Pearson found no difference in capacity for visual, number or spatial working memory between people with aphantasia and controls, although the two groups reported using different strategies. Speed is where a small cost can appear. In Pounder's study, the aphantasia group was slower on a planning task as the number of moves to hold in mind increased, with equal accuracy, and slower mental rotation appeared only in the subgroup with the most severe imagery loss. On timed tests, slower responses could matter for some individuals even when accuracy is intact.
Where differences do show up
The clearest differences involve memory for personal experience. In Milton's study, despite equivalent scores on standard memory tests, the aphantasia group scored markedly lower than controls on autobiographical memory and imagination, and the hyperphantasia group scored above them. Monzel and colleagues likewise found lower everyday and autobiographical memory scores in people with aphantasia, with no difference on a theory-of-mind test that involves judging mental states from photographs of the eyes.
Self-reported difficulty recognising faces is also more common. Zeman's questionnaire study found elevated rates of face recognition problems in aphantasia, and about half of the aphantasic respondents reported no wakeful imagery in any sense, although a majority dreamed visually. None of these differences amounts to lower general intelligence, which is why IQ scores in this group look ordinary.
Why the imagery questionnaire is not an IQ test
People searching for an "aphantasia IQ test" usually find the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), introduced by Marks in 1973. It asks people to imagine scenes and rate how vivid each image is, giving a total from 16 to 80 in the version used in recent research. In Milton's study, aphantasia was defined as a score of 16 to 23 and hyperphantasia as 75 to 80.
The VVIQ is a self-report measure of experience, so it has no right or wrong answers and no norms for reasoning. A high or low VVIQ score says nothing about where someone stands on an IQ scale, and research suggests people with aphantasia often reach the right answer by a different route. A lifelong absence of imagery is not a medical problem in itself. A sudden loss of imagery, as in the case of MX, is different and should be raised with a doctor, and anyone distressed by aphantasia can talk to a clinical psychologist.
Frequently asked questions
Do people with aphantasia have a higher IQ?
There is no good evidence that aphantasia raises IQ. One small study found a mean of about 115 in its aphantasia group, but the volunteers were self-selected and the controls also scored above average.
Does aphantasia lower IQ test scores?
Studies have not found a general deficit. Some people with severe aphantasia may be a little slower on timed spatial tasks, while their accuracy is usually similar to that of typical imagers.
Is there an IQ test for aphantasia?
No. Aphantasia is identified with self-report questionnaires such as the VVIQ, which rate the vividness of imagery and do not measure reasoning ability.
How common is aphantasia?
Studies estimate that about 3.5% to 4.8% of people have aphantasia, with the most extreme form at about 0.7%.
Can people with aphantasia do mental rotation tasks?
Yes. Accuracy on mental rotation and other spatial tasks is generally similar to typical imagers, although the most severely affected may respond more slowly.
The takeaway
Aphantasia IQ research gives a consistent answer: lacking a mind's eye does not mean lacking intelligence. People with aphantasia score in the normal or above-average range on Wechsler tests and keep their spatial accuracy, while differing mainly in autobiographical memory and the experience of imagining. The VVIQ measures that experience, and an IQ test measures reasoning. If you are curious how your own reasoning compares, whatever your imagery, an online IQ test built by psychometricians gives a normed starting point.
References
1. Galton, F. (1880). Statistics of mental imagery. Mind, 5(19), 301-318. doi.org
2. Zeman, A. Z. J., Della Sala, S., Torrens, L. A., Gountouna, V.-E., McGonigle, D. J., & Logie, R. H. (2010). Loss of imagery phenomenology with intact visuo-spatial task performance: A case of "blind imagination". Neuropsychologia, 48(1), 145-155. doi.org
3. Zeman, A., Dewar, M., & Della Sala, S. (2015). Lives without imagery: Congenital aphantasia. Cortex, 73, 378-380. doi.org
4. Dance, C. J., Ipser, A., & Simner, J. (2022). The prevalence of aphantasia (imagery weakness) in the general population. Consciousness and Cognition, 97, 103243. doi.org
5. Monzel, M., Vetterlein, A., & Reuter, M. (2023). No general pathological significance of aphantasia: An evaluation based on criteria for mental disorders. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 64(3), 314-324. doi.org
6. Milton, F., Fulford, J., Dance, C., Gaddum, J., Heuerman-Williamson, B., Jones, K., ... Zeman, A. (2021). Behavioral and neural signatures of visual imagery vividness extremes: Aphantasia versus hyperphantasia. Cerebral Cortex Communications, 2(2), tgab035. doi.org
7. Pounder, Z., Jacob, J., Evans, S., Loveday, C., Eardley, A. F., & Silvanto, J. (2022). Only minimal differences between individuals with congenital aphantasia and those with typical imagery on neuropsychological tasks that involve imagery. Cortex, 148, 180-192. doi.org
8. Zeman, A., Milton, F., Della Sala, S., Dewar, M., Frayling, T., Gaddum, J., ... Winlove, C. (2020). Phantasia: The psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes. Cortex, 130, 426-440. doi.org
9. Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2018). The blind mind: No sensory visual imagery in aphantasia. Cortex, 105, 53-60. doi.org
10. Bainbridge, W. A., Pounder, Z., Eardley, A. F., & Baker, C. I. (2021). Quantifying aphantasia through drawing: Those without visual imagery show deficits in object but not spatial memory. Cortex, 135, 159-172. doi.org
11. Keogh, R., Wicken, M., & Pearson, J. (2021). Visual working memory in aphantasia: Retained accuracy and capacity with a different strategy. Cortex, 143, 237-253. doi.org
12. Marks, D. F. (1973). Visual imagery differences in the recall of pictures. British Journal of Psychology, 64(1), 17-24. doi.org
Hero image: Copped Hall interior empty picture frame, Epping, Essex, England 01, by Acabashi, licensed CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). Via Wikimedia Commons.
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