Dr Reshanne Reeder
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kerblooee.bsky.social
Dr Reshanne Reeder
@kerblooee.bsky.social
540 followers 400 following 310 posts
Cognitive scientist, mom, citizen of the world. Interested in mental imagery extremes and divergent perception. Got a cool theory.
The "Ganzflicker Lady"
https://reshannereeder.com
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kerblooee.bsky.social
2. The idea that most kids have hyperphantasia but it's not usually carried forward into adulthood. When kids go through adolescence and focus less on fantasy, their mental imagery is reduced - a.k.a., "use it or lose it". Those who keep their hyperphantasia never abandoned their fantasies. 3/4
For kids, both vivid internal imagery and mental projection (prophantasia) are extremely common. At the Superbrains! kids neuroscience workshop, I interviewed 25 kids about their mental imagery experiences and many of them could easily imagine whatever was instructed of them and more. In the above example, when asked to imagine an apple and to indicate how effortful it was, this 10 year old responded that they could see the colors as vividly as seeing a real apple, they could see their reflection in it, no mouldy bits, very refreshing. They could imagine it's tasty, red & green. When asked to imagine the apple actually in their hand, they could also see it and feel it as vividly as if it were actually there. It feels nice, with juice off it. They could also see their reflection in it when imagining holding it up to their face, and see red & green colors.
October 29, 2025 at 12:47 PM
kerblooee.bsky.social
1. That hyperphantasia, like aphantasia, is more than just a number on a vividness scale. It is a multidimensional construct that includes having immersive fantasy worlds and potentially maladaptive daydreaming. 2/4
Future research on imagery extremes should go beyond classifying individuals based on vividness cutoffs, and take into account the multidimensionality of both extremes. Aphantasia is associated with SDAM, being "in the here and now", symbolic thinking, and neurodiversity. Recent research suggests hyperphantasia is just as multidimensional, and includes maladaptive daydreaming, immersive inner worlds like a "mind palace", the ability to project imagery into the external environment to enhance reality, and may also be associated with neurodiversity.
October 29, 2025 at 12:47 PM
kerblooee.bsky.social
Thanks for the ref, though this also shows that first author does the most work in virtually all disciplines, followed by senior (see Fig.6). I'm not arguing abt the importance of middle authors, they deserve authorship, but it is usually less work to be a middle author in any field
October 26, 2025 at 3:48 PM
kerblooee.bsky.social
Particularly like this part here:
Implicit measures typically impose impoverished and constrained communication formats, reducing expression of complex subjective experiences into binary button presses ... Indeed such dichotomy seem highly problematic in light of the growing body of work on intersectionality.
September 23, 2025 at 9:21 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
"Thinking in pictures" or "blind mind's eye"? The experience of mental imagery in autism

A recording of my talk for the Liverpool Autism Hub @theautismhub.bsky.social :

youtu.be/J6kBAQvpRp4
https://youtu.be/J6kBAQvpRp4
August 26, 2025 at 9:03 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
And come to my talk on Tuesday @3pm in the Individual Differences session, where I will present the first largescale (N~3,000) empirical evidence for my model of divergent predictive perception! #ECVP2025
August 24, 2025 at 10:03 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
What will you see in the ganzflicker?

Only at Illusion & Demo Night on my birthday (26 August)!
@ecvp.bsky.social
#ECVP2025
August 24, 2025 at 10:03 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
Don't miss the Superlab during the week of #ECVP2025! Lot's of research being presented by the team, including Ganzflicker (Wes Nixon), illusions (Katerina Christodoulou), emotions & memory (Emma Austin), and philosophical perspectives on amodal completion (Georgie Brighouse)!
August 24, 2025 at 10:03 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
And after you've seen that one, come try out the famous psychedelic simulator- Ganzflicker!

What will you see in the ganzflicker?

Only at Illusion & Demo Night on my birthday (26 August)!
@ecvp.bsky.social #ECVP2025
August 20, 2025 at 10:25 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
2. Do correlations between VWM and VMI still hold in the typical imagery group only? If the effect is driven by group differences, this would also skew the correlation, as shown in one of the figures from the paper, below: 3/4
August 17, 2025 at 9:54 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
If you are at #CogSci2025 go see Seana Coulson present the poster on @chkhaidze.bsky.social's computational ganzflicker study!

Friday, 1st August, poster session 2!

cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci-2025/
Visual imagery vividness predicts the complexity of induced hallucinations, poster session 2 on Friday August 1st, salon 8
July 30, 2025 at 4:04 PM
kerblooee.bsky.social
Whereas vivid imagery allows for the embellishment of that noise into semantically meaningful, often dream-like content, implicating a critical role of mental imagery ability in different hallucinatory experiences.

Now for the 1st time, we have evidence for this! (Bonus cluster analysis below)
5/5
Content clustered by different themes, with complex experiences in red & purple hues, feelings/descriptive/abstract experiences in aqua hues, geometric experiences in orangey brown, and the most low-level descriptions (distortions, flashes) in pale green
July 15, 2025 at 8:25 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
City skylines & morphing faces were most commonly reported by vivid imagers, while color flashes & patterns were commonly reported by weak imagers. Interestingly, vivid imagers reported more unpleasant experiences, speculatively suggesting a link between complex & negative (paychiatric-like?)...
3/5
Lasso coefficients for different topics of content described, showing that strong imagers describe city skylines, morphing faces, and unpleasant experiences, while weak imagers are more likely to describe simple patterns and color flashes, suggesting fundamentally different experiences for different inagery phenotypes
July 15, 2025 at 8:25 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
3 techniques triangulated on the content & we cumulatively found vivid and weak imagers use semantically distinct language to describe their hallucinations: vivid imagers' descriptions are rich in complex, concrete, sensorimotor content, while weak imagers saw more stereotyped simple patterns...
2/5
3 techniques were used to analyse content of ganzflicker hallucinations: 1) topic modeling, which identified simple hallucinations in weak imagers and complex hallucinations in vivid imagers; 2) deep learning models, which showed that different inagery phenotypes gave semantically distinct descriptions; and 3) sensorimotor norms, demonstrating vivid imagers describe seeing content with higher perceptual and motor strength
July 15, 2025 at 8:25 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
Attending @assc28.bsky.social ? Don't miss this exciting Ganzflicker talk tomorrow @9:30 where the fabulous Wes Nixon is presenting the first* empirical evidence for the theory of divergent predictive perception!

*(& certainly not last, see my talk in August @ecvp.bsky.social)
https://www.conftool.com/assc2025/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=48#paperID357
July 6, 2025 at 3:25 PM
kerblooee.bsky.social
Here you go:
as described to individuals during interview: osf.io/hyefp/
The spectrum of mental imagery, as described by individuals during interview: https://osf.io/hyefp/
June 25, 2025 at 6:33 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
A-Aphants seem to be multisensory aphantasics, whereas it appears that B-Aphants have an inner voice & intact verbal imagery. These self-reported abilities correlate with performance on objective behavioral tasks. Very cool!
June 21, 2025 at 5:01 PM
kerblooee.bsky.social
It's possible that certain passages are chatgpt-generated. For example, 4 of the fake references all appear in the same paragraph, and the writing surrounding the references (e.g., "X studied the involvement of...") must have been generated by chatgpt (bc the study does not exist):
As noted, anterior/posterior hippocampal specialization occurs. The anterior hippocampus, especially the CA1 and subiculum subfields, is involved in constructing scenes during temporal order memory tasks. This activity is linked to successful memory retrieval by integrating spatial and temporal elements (Aly, Chen, Turk-Browne & Hasson, 2024). Barry, Chadwick and Maguire (2022) found that the anterior hippocampus engages during the construction phase of autobiographical memory retrieval, regardless of memory age. This suggests a role of the anterior hippocampus in assembling general aspects of memories that are essential for imagining future events. McCormick, Ciaramelli, De Luca and Maguire (2023) revisited specialization along the hippocampal long axis and found that activity within the anterior hippocampus correlates with scene construction. Addis, Pan, Vu, Laiser and Schacter (2019) studied the involvement of the left anterior hippocampus in constructing specific and detailed imaginary future episodes. This activity was associated with the richness of episodic details in imagined events, emphasizing its role in episodic future thinking.
May 29, 2025 at 12:43 PM
kerblooee.bsky.social
8 articles in the reference list are completely fabricated, but probably the most damning evidence that ChatGPT was used in this work can be seen in this screenshot of the preprint. Hovering over the 'Pubmed' link for one article, it gave source=chatgpt.com:
May 28, 2025 at 10:23 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
The phrasing is from Zeman et al, 2015 (see screenshot of what they sent out to individuals - note also the spelling error of 'perfectly'). This difference was news to me! I also have problems with using the VVIQ to 'diagnose' aphantasia - I have many of the same criticisms as Marks on that!
For each item on this questionnaire, try to form a visual image, and consider your experience carefully. For any image that you do experience, rate how vivid it is using the five-point scale described below. If you do not have a visual image, rate vividness as ‘1’. Only use ‘5’ for images that are truly as lively and vivid as real seeing. Please note that there are no right or wrong answers to the questions, and that it is not necessarily desirable to experience imagery or, if you do, to have more vivid imagery. Perfecting clear and lively as real seeing 5 Clear and lively 4 Moderately clear and lively 3 Dim and vague; flat 2 No image at all, you only “know” that you are thinking of the object 1
May 13, 2025 at 8:31 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
And just as a reference, the screenshot from the section of the paper:
The first stimulus participants saw was a large, filled black rectangle. Participants were first presented with the instructions: With your eyes open, imagine a red 5-pointed star, and attempt to see this star out in front of you in the black space below. They were given as much time as needed to imagine the star within the filled black rectangle. On the next page of the form, they were presented with the comparison stimulus (see Fig.1a). The comparison stimulus was a picture with 6 panels of different variations of a 5-pointed star against a black background: 1) blank (only the background), 2)a faint gray outline of a star, 3) a defined gray outline of a star, 4) a gray-filled star, 5) a faint,red-filled star, and 6) a bright, red-filled star. Participants were then asked to choose which image (1-6) most closely matched their mental projection of a red star.
May 8, 2025 at 1:33 PM
kerblooee.bsky.social
Philosophers (Bence Nanay, Cavedon-Taylor) and Galton (1880) have talked about mental projection, but it is rarely investigated as a dimension of imagery in experiments. Adding a #prophantasia test (see picture) to your study could reveal new insights!

6/8
Hold your hand out in front of you, and with your eyes open, imagine an apple sitting in your outstretched hand. Can you see it? Can you feel its weight? How realistic is your projection?
May 6, 2025 at 8:24 AM
kerblooee.bsky.social
And as the alchemists heave over the field of consciousness like ants on ice cream, a new science of subjective experience can emerge...
A meme of the conspiracy theorist from 'Ancient Aliens': I'm not saying it's imagery, but... it's imagery
May 2, 2025 at 3:29 PM
kerblooee.bsky.social
And just remember... it's all been said before! Let's not forget it this time.

From Strosahl & Ascough, 1981:
"A second clinical research tradition attempted to establish an empirical association between behavior therapy outcome and individual differences in imagery ability (Beere, 1972; David, McLemore, & London, 1970; Dyckman & Cowan, 1978; Kazdin, 1975; McLemore, 1972; McSweeney, 1976). The majority of these studies indicated that, with pretreatment imagery ability assessed by self-report as the independent variable, few meaningful relations with treatment outcome were observed." "When constructing a research design to test the individual differences hypothesis, it is important to assess the specific predictions generated by this hypothesis; for example, examining the clinical success of visualizers and verbalizers is distinct from the question of simple interval differences in imagery ability. It is likely that the true verbalizer is exceedingly rare in the general population; McKellar (1965) found that the occurrence of visual imagery was common in 97% of 500 subjects studied, whereas auditory imagery was also reported by the vast majority of individuals (93%). The visualizer-verbalizer issue may thus be more suitable to an ideographic design strategy; interval ability differences may be more fruitfully approached through nomothetic designs."
April 4, 2025 at 1:59 PM
kerblooee.bsky.social
In short, I hate I hate I hate AI
April 2, 2025 at 8:02 AM