A very interesting article; it made me reflect on my own imagination. I can’t help wondering if there are not varying strengths of visual imagination (and verbal… and touch… and smell…) from the full on Phantastic through minor increments to the full on Aphantastic.
At school I was always able to sketch well (recording what I saw), with none of the distortions that others showed. Yet my imagined artwork (recreating my mind’s eye) was always strongly graphic and structured, rather than ‘floaty’ and loose. Even today my hobby photography concentrates on form and structure rather than colour and texture.
Perhaps I’m on ‘on the Phantasia spectrum’ and towards the Aphantastic end? I’d also be interested to see if Aphantasia has and linkage to Personality Typology. We don’t have very good words to describe our inner experiences do we?