Aphantasia modulates immersion experience but not eye fixation patterns during story reading

Story reading is often accompanied by mental visualization of the scenes and the events described. Individuals with aphantasia, who report not experiencing vivid visual imagery, have recently been reported to be less absorbed and engaged when reading stories. In the present study, we explored how aphantasics read imagery-rich stories differently from control subjects by analyzing their gaze fixation patterns. We found that in both groups, gaze fixation was similarly influenced by different types of story content. Notably, under perceptual imagery, which involves sensory-rich contents, the influence was the strongest, resulting in longer fixation durations during relevant keywords in both groups. Despite the same fixation patterns, aphantasics reported less experienced immersion in the stories, consistent with a previous study. Furthermore, we observed that in control subjects, longer fixation duration on perceptual imagery contents was correlated with higher experienced mental imagery, whereas in aphantasic individuals, this relationship was absent and even reversed. Our findings may align with the account that imagery under aphantasia may be nonconscious rather than nonexistent, leading to the lack of introspective access to mental images, as the fixation patterns indicative of reading behavior were similar, while only reported subjective experiences differed under aphantasia.