Kathryn Friedlander walks us through her recent article on mental imagery in the BPS Cognitive Psychology Bulletin. The article was based on a keynote speech at the BPS Cognitive Section research seminars in August 2025. For those who couldn’t make it to the BPS event, links are also given to Kathryn’s 40-minute webinar on YouTube, which uses the keynote slides.
Mental imagery and expertise research
Expertise research has often prioritised reliability, accuracy, and consistency. That emphasis has delivered important insights, especially in domains where performance can be measured in errors, speed, or precision.
But creative and performing domains do not fit neatly into that model. Excellence there includes qualities such as aesthetic judgement, interpretative depth, communication, sensitivity to nuance, and the ability to move an audience. Creativity is also key, as I argued in my book, The Psychology of Creative Performance and Expertise (Routledge, 2024; see the precis here). Without the ability to reimagine an art form – whether a piece of music, a dance, or a theatrical work – performance can rapidly become stale.
As I argue in my talk, this is where mental imagery becomes especially interesting. Many of the aspects we value most in creative performance depend as much on what a person can generate internally, within their imagination, as on what they can reproduce externally.
Mental imagery is not only “rehearsal”
Mental imagery is usually described as perceptual or motor experience generated without direct sensory input. In other words, we have the experience of seeing, but only in the ‘mind’s eye’. In fact, mental imagery is not just visual: it can be auditory, tactile, kinaesthetic, gustatory, and olfactory, too. An earworm (a nagging tune that won’t go away), for example, is a form of auditory imagery.
In expertise contexts, imagery is sometimes treated primarily as a rehearsal tool: mentally running through a routine, preparing for a performance, or refining technique. While mental imagery does support several aspects of execution during performance preparation, it can also function as a workspace for internal experimentation. This means that in creative applications of expertise, imagery is often less about replaying a fixed sequence and more about simulating possibilities, exploring alternatives, and testing transformations.
Three imagery functions that may support creative expertise
In my paper on mental imagery with my colleague Philip Fine and former research student Freya Lenton, we discussed several aspects of mental imagery which might particularly support distal (remote), creative forms of thinking. These are set out below; for more detail, do watch my webinar here.
1) Mental storyboarding
One of the most compelling functions is what we call mental storyboarding: the deliberate use of imagery to develop narrative, structure, and moment-to-moment progression of a moving scene.
In creative writing, this can resemble an inner “film” or staged sequence where characters, the tone of their speech, the pacing of the action, and the atmosphere of the setting are simulated and evaluated. For actors working in Method acting traditions, similar processes are used to acquire a detailed knowledge of the part, while ‘living the part truthfully’. This involves mentally simulating the script to achieve close personal congruency with the character, and a fine-tuned interpretation of their intentions and emotions. We can easily see how this might also translate to choreography and the writing of film scripts or plays.
2) Conceptual expansion and counterfactual exploration
A second function is conceptual expansion: imagery that helps people imagine beyond the here-and-now. This includes counterfactual thinking and “what-if” exploration, where the mind constructs alternatives, tests constraints, and considers consequences. We can see this type of imagination at work when people dare to break the constraining ‘rules’ of an art form, reimagine what is possible within their genre, and produce an art form that subverts, challenges, or revolutionises what has gone before.
3) Imagery in scientific and applied innovation
Imagery also matters outside the arts. It can support innovation in scientific and technical work by allowing people to model, manipulate, and explore complex structures and relationships internally. Using the mind’s ability to simulate three-dimensional structures and rotations in space, creative inventors, engineers and physicists (such as Feynman, Hawking, and Einstein) have challenged the very foundations of our knowledge. When problems are abstract or multi-dimensional, internal simulation can provide a way to explore the possibilities before formalisation or external testing.
It is a small step from this to speculate that spatial mental imagery might also support members of film production teams, whether directors, special-effects artists, cinematographers, or cutting-room editors.
What this means for research
If mental imagery is indeed a genuine engine of creative expertise, as I have argued above, it raises several research priorities that deserve more sustained attention.
- Imagery ability – a new approach to measurement: Standard measures often capture everyday imagery vividness, but creative expertise may rely on forms of imagery that are more structural, conceptual, multi-modal, or action-oriented. Nonetheless, we might also explore whether ‘vividness’ of mental imagery (perhaps in visualising texture, colour, and shape) might support those working in artistic domains such as couture, painting, and product design.
- Spontaneous imagery and creative discovery: Beyond deliberate rehearsal, we should explore how mind-wandering, involuntary imagery, and impromptu inner simulations contribute to creative exploration.
- Under-examined modalities: Taste and smell imagery are rarely studied, yet they are plausibly central in domains where chemosensory expertise matters. Take perfumers, mixologists, and chefs such as Heston Blumenthal, for example: is the ability to imagine smell and taste combinations key to their success?
- Aphantasia and alternative routes: Some creators report little or no visual imagery yet remain highly effective. Studying their strategies can clarify how key imagery is within their domain, and what can compensate when imagery is limited.
A closing question about creativity in an AI-saturated environment
The article also raises a contemporary question: what happens to imaginative life when generative AI provides low-effort outputs on demand?
My concern is that AI tools sap human creativity, replacing genuine innovation with synthesised mediocrity. In my view, the crux of the matter is that human imagination is embodied – that is, it evokes actual physical sensations as well as firing the mind. So imagination also recruits our sensory, emotional, and motivational systems, and it is tied to curiosity, play, and absorption. This infuses the best of our work with subtlety, authenticity, and genuine originality.
Bypassing this internal simulation too readily may take away the struggle, to be sure; yet it is in that very struggle that real advancement is to be found (often accompanied by a delicious Aha! moment of discovery). By choosing the path of least resistance and surrendering to AI ‘slop’, we risk losing the depth, resonance and personal meaning that make human creative expertise distinctive.
What next?
Interested in learning more? Do check out the YouTube video, my Cognitive Bulletin and Multifactorial imagery model articles, and my book. We will shortly be launching research into this area, so do follow this blog for details of how you could get involved!
Do get in touch with Kathryn in the comments if you would like to hear more about our research.
Images:
Creative imagination/chef – AI generated
Front slide of talk – copyright Kathryn Friedlander
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