Little is known about the perceptual characteristics of mental images nor how they vary across sensory modalities. We conducted an exhaustive survey into how mental images are experienced across modalities, mainly targeting visual and auditory imagery of a single stimulus, the letter “O”, to facilitate direct comparisons. We investigated temporal properties of mental images (e.g. onset latency, duration), spatial properties (e.g. apparent location), effort (e.g. ease, spontaneity, control), movement requirements (e.g. eye movements), real-imagined interactions (e.g. inner speech while reading), beliefs about imagery norms and terminologies, as well as respondent confidence. Participants also reported on the five traditional senses and their prominence during thinking, imagining, and dreaming. Overall, visual and auditory experiences dominated mental events, although auditory mental images were superior to visual mental images on almost every metric tested except regarding spatial properties. Our findings suggest that modality-specific differences in mental imagery may parallel those of other sensory neural processes.

我们对心理图像的感知特征以及它们在不同感觉模式中如何变化知之甚少。我们对心理意象如何跨模式体验进行了详尽的调查，主要针对单一刺激（字母“O”）的视觉和听觉意象，以方便直接比较。我们研究了心理图像的时间属性（例如起始潜伏期、持续时间）、空间属性（例如明显位置）、努力（例如轻松性、自发性、控制）、运动要求（例如眼睛运动）、真实想象的交互（例如内心言语）阅读）、对图像规范和术语的信念以及受访者的信心。参与者还报告了五种传统感官及其在思考、想象和做梦过程中的重要性。总体而言，视觉和听觉体验主导了心理事件，尽管除了空间属性之外，在几乎所有测试指标上，听觉心理图​​像都优于视觉心理图像。我们的研究结果表明，心理意象中特定形态的差异可能与其他感觉神经过程的差异相似。