u/RevolutionaryAd3125

My son came home from school genuinely upset after a ‘top student’ award was given to a pupil who, according to him, regularly receives demerits and detentions. He wasn’t upset because he expected to win. He was trying to understand what the school was rewarding.

He’s never had a detention or demerit, consistently works hard, is among the top performers academically, and quietly gets on with things every day.

I understand recognising improvement. If a pupil has turned things around, that’s worth celebrating. But at what point does rewarding improvement start to overshadow rewarding consistency?

If the message pupils receive is, “Consistently doing the right thing is simply expected, but improving after falling short earns recognition,” are we creating the right incentives?

I’m interested in hearing from teachers and parents. How should schools strike the balance between recognising progress and recognising sustained excellence?

Aphantasia has rapidly gained public attention over the last decade, but I remain unconvinced that the evidence supports many of the claims made about it.

My skepticism is not directed at people who report an absence of mental imagery. People clearly differ in how they experience their inner lives. Rather, I question whether aphantasia has been adequately defined, measured, and validated as a distinct psychological phenomenon.

Many studies rely heavily on self-report questionnaires, making it difficult to separate genuine differences in mental imagery from differences in introspection, interpretation of survey questions, memory, attention, or metacognition. In the few studies that have included objective measurements the aphantasia groups were self identifying, the tests were unblinded, and the sample sizes small. There is also ongoing debate about whether people are reporting a lack of visual experience itself or simply a lack of conscious access to that experience.

Despite frequent claims that aphantasia represents an inability to form mental images, objective measures often reveal evidence of imagery-related processing in at least some individuals who identify as aphantasic. This raises questions about what exactly is absent and whether the current understanding of aphantasia is too simplistic.

As interest in the topic has grown, some claims have outpaced the evidence. Assertions about prevalence, neurological causes, cognitive consequences, and links to other conditions are often presented with greater confidence than the available data seem to justify.

This community exists to critically examine the evidence behind aphantasia research. Discussion should be evidence-based, open-minded, and respectful. Questioning a hypothesis is not the same as dismissing people’s experiences. Science advances through scrutiny, replication, and debate.

Claims require evidence. Evidence requires examination.

Hey everyone! I'm u/RevolutionaryAd3125, a founding moderator of r/aphantasia_skeptics.
I started this community to discuss skepticism around the claims and scientific evidence around aphantasia and the newly emerging hyperphantasia.

After being kicked from the r/aphantasia community for asking legitimate questions and pointing out poor methodologies in the objective aphantasia studies, I started this group to connect with anybody else who believes there is a lack of skepticism on the topic.

What to Post
Comments and discussion regarding your personal experience of mental imagery and those who claim to have no internal representations.

Community Vibe
A skeptic’s take on the state of the science and the claims of both aphantasiacs and hyperphantasiacs

How to Get Started

1. Introduce yourself in the comments below.
2. Post something today! Even a simple question can spark a great conversation.
3. If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.
4. Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/aphantasia_skeptics amazing.

NASA are underfunded, and are not the only space agency on the planet. They are one of thousands of scientific bodies on earth, why so much attention on them?

Appliance’s or toy cars are the monikers thrown out by petrol heads. In fact I would argue that EVs are the type of vehicle ICE developers were trying to design in the early days. For all their complexity traditional engines have a simple goal to spin an axle quickly and efficiently. I find it kind of ridiculous that motoring lovers would eschew the electric motor purely based on the fact that it’s less complex. I get there’s a clockwork-like beauty in the modern engine. But technology has moved on. It seems to me that because they don’t understand how these electric systems work it’s not “real engineering” which couldn’t be further from the truth.
My question is this. Why would anyone prefer a noisy, oily, high maintenance, polluting and inefficient engine over a smooth, simple, clean and efficient one?