Why six senses and not just visual?

Imagination shows up in every sense—sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and the feel of movement. Many people have strong imagery in one sense and weak in another (e.g. no mind's eye but vivid inner music). A single visual score would miss that. We built across six so you get a profile, not a number that pretends to sum you up.

Does this replace the VVIQ?

No. The VVIQ is the standard for visual-only measurement and research. Our assessment includes visual imagery in the same spirit and adds five other dimensions. If you only need a quick visual snapshot, the VVIQ is still the right tool. If you want to see how you imagine across the board, the full profile is the fit. We cover when to use which in [Imagination Index vs VVIQ](/articles/imagination-index-vs-vviq).

Who is the assessment for?

Anyone curious about how they imagine—whether you've just learned about the [spectrum](/articles/what-is-the-imagination-spectrum), you're wondering why you learn or create differently from others, or you want to put words to something you've always felt but never measured. It's for individuals, educators, teams, and researchers who want a single profile across senses rather than separate tools for each.

2026-03-06

Why We Built an Assessment Across Six Senses

Most people who look for a way to "measure" their imagination run into the same thing: a questionnaire that asks how vividly they see pictures in their mind. The VVIQ and tools like it have been the standard for decades. They answer one question well—how strong is your mind's eye?—but imagination isn't only visual. We built the Imagination Index to answer a different question: how do you imagine across the full sensory picture? Here's why that mattered to us and what we hoped you'd get from it.

One Number Wasn't Enough

When we looked at how imagination is talked about and measured, we kept seeing the same gap. Research and everyday language both treat imagination as something that happens in six channels: visual, auditory, motor, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile. Yet almost every well-known tool gives you a single score, usually for vision. That score is useful—it can flag aphantasia or hyperphantasia and correlate with memory or creativity in studies—but it can also mislead. Someone with no visual imagery might assume they "have no imagination," when in fact they have strong auditory or motor imagery. A single number can't tell you that. We wanted an assessment that could.

Real Differences in How People Imagine

We also kept running into the same story: people who only discovered late in life that others literally "see" things in their heads, or that their own way of imagining wasn't universal. That discovery often explained years of confusion—why "picture it" never worked, why they preferred words over diagrams, or why they excelled in music or movement while struggling with purely visual tasks. The imagination spectrum isn't just a curiosity; it shapes how we learn, how we create, and how we work. We wanted a tool that would make that spectrum visible in one place—so you could see your own pattern and use it, instead of wondering why you didn't fit a single "visualizer" box.

Why Six, Specifically

We chose six senses to match how researchers and clinicians typically break down mental imagery: visual, auditory, motor, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile. That’s not arbitrary. It aligns with the way imagination is studied—with tools like the VVIQ for vision, the VMIQ for movement, the VAIQ for sound, and so on—and with the fact that people report real variation in each. By including all six in one assessment, we could give you a profile instead of a single score: one place that shows where you're strong, where you're not, and how that might relate to the things you care about (learning, creativity, communication, performance). We didn't want to replace those research tools; we wanted to offer a single, practical way to get a full picture without taking five different questionnaires.

What We Wanted You to Take Away

We had a few goals in mind when we designed the assessment:

Clarity. So you could see, in one place, how you imagine across sight, sound, movement, and the rest—and so that "I don't see anything" could sit next to "but I hear it clearly" instead of being treated as the whole story.
A better basis for conversation. So you could name the difference when working or learning with others—e.g. "I'm low on visual imagery; describe it in words" or "I'm strong on motor imagery; I'll rehearse it in my head."
No pressure to "fix" anything. Imagination isn't broken if it's different. The assessment is there to describe and inform, not to pathologize. Creativity and learning work across the full spectrum.
A bridge to the rest of the site. So your profile would connect to the blog and imagination types—where you can read more about what each sense means and how it shows up in life and work.

So the assessment was never about replacing the VVIQ or the research. It was about giving you one place to get a full sensory profile and to use that profile in a practical way.

How It Fits With What Already Exists

The VVIQ and tools like it stay the standard for visual-only measurement. For research, screening, or a quick check of the mind's eye, they're the right choice. What we built is for the moment when you ask: "What about the other senses? What's my overall pattern?" For that, you need more than one number—and that's what the Imagination Index assessment is for. It takes about 12 minutes, the core profile is free, and you get a single Imagery Profile you can use for yourself, your team, or your teaching. If you're not sure which tool to use when, we wrote Imagination Index vs VVIQ to help.

Try It

If you're curious how you imagine across all six senses, the Imagination Index assessment is built for that. One profile, one place—and no single number pretending to sum you up.