VVIQ and Beyond: Why Measure More Than Visual Imagery?

The VVIQ—Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire—is one of the most widely used tools for measuring how vividly people "see" in their mind's eye. If you've read about aphantasia or how imagination is measured, you've likely seen it mentioned. It does one job well: it captures variation in visual imagery. But imagination is not only visual.

What the VVIQ Does

The VVIQ (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire) was developed by psychologist David Marks in 1973. It uses 16 items: you imagine four specific scenarios (e.g. a relative's face, a shop, a sunrise, a countryside scene) and rate each on a 5-point scale from "no image at all" to "perfectly clear and as vivid as normal vision." A revised VVIQ2 (1995) doubles the items to 32 and uses a scale where higher scores mean higher vividness. Both versions show high reliability and validity; scores correlate with performance on image recall, mental rotation, and even brain structure (e.g. hippocampus and visual cortex). Researchers use it to study visual imagination, and many people first learn they have aphantasia or hyper-vivid imagery through a VVIQ-style assessment.

Limitations: the VVIQ is subjective self-report—it relies on your judgment without external verification, and meta-analyses note ongoing debate about how much reflects stable trait versus situational state. It also measures only visual imagery and may not fully capture the extremes (aphantasia to hyperphantasia) in every sample. So for "How strong is my mind's eye?" the VVIQ is a solid answer. For "How do I imagine?" it's only a start.

What the VVIQ Doesn't Cover

The VVIQ does not measure:

• Auditory imagery — how clearly you hear music, voices, or sounds in your head. That matters for language, music, and auditory imagination.
• Motor imagery — how strongly you feel movement or body position when you imagine it. That matters for athletes, performers, and motor imagination.
• Olfactory, gustatory, and tactile imagery — smell, taste, and touch. These are often overlooked but part of a full imagination spectrum. See olfactory, gustatory, and tactile imagination for how each is measured and why it matters.

Someone can have low or no visual imagery (high VVIQ "no image" responses) and still have strong imagery in other senses. They might replay melodies clearly, imagine movements vividly, or have rich inner speech. A visual-only score would miss that.

Why Multisensory Measurement Helps

When you measure more than vision, you get a profile instead of a single number. That profile can:

• Explain why you excel in some domains (e.g. music or movement) even if your visual imagery is low.
• Clarify learning and memory differences: how imagination affects memory and learning depends on which senses you use.
• Reduce the false idea that "no mind's eye" means "no imagination." Creativity can run on other channels.

Validated tools for other modalities exist: the VAIQ (auditory imagery), VMIQ (movement/kinesthetic imagery), VOIQ (olfactory imagery), and others. The Psi-Q (Dance et al., 2022) is a multisensory questionnaire that assesses vividness across visual, auditory, and other modalities in one instrument. The Imagination Index is built on that idea: six dimensions, one profile, so you see the full picture.

When to Use What

Use the VVIQ (or a VVIQ-style section) when you care specifically about visual imagery. Use a multisensory assessment when you want to know how you imagine across sight, sound, movement, and the rest. For a direct comparison and decision guide, see Imagination Index vs VVIQ: when to use which. For most people curious about their own imagination, the fuller picture is more useful.

Get a Full Imagery Profile

The Imagination Index assessment includes visual imagery measurement and adds auditory, motor, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile dimensions. You get a single Imagery Profile and optional detailed reporting. The core assessment is free and takes about 12 minutes. For the story behind why we built it across six senses, see Why we built an assessment across six senses.

Further reading: VVIQ – PMC; Marks – VVIQ.