Mental Rotation is a weak measure of the propensity to visualise

There is increasing evidence of substantial differences in people’s capacity to voluntarily visualise – with some (Congenital Aphants) asserting they cannot visualise at all. Its been suggested that Congenital Aphants might be mistaken about their inability, as some have performed similarly on tasks purported to measure imagery – including the mental rotation task, where people decide if objects depicted from different viewpoints are the same or different. We examined how the vividness of people’s imagery is related to performance on a ‘mental rotation’ task. People also reported on their response strategies. Mental rotation was an overall superior response strategy relative to non-visualising. However, the vividness of people’s imagery was only weakly associated with viewpoint contingent changes in task performance, and it did not predict changes in reliance on mental rotation as a response strategy. Overall, our data suggest performance on mental rotation tasks is a weak measure of people’s propensity to visualise.