For what it's worth, there's a study (N=123) on recall for people with aphantansia [0]. One of the tests was to take a look at a picture, of a living room with

For what it's worth, there's a study (N=123) on recall for people with aphantansia [0]. One of the tests was to take a look at a picture, of a living room with furniture in it, say, and then have the subject try to redraw the room in as much detail as they can. People with aphantansia have better spatial accuracy and fewer memory errors. The basic hypothesis is, I guess, that people with aphantansia develop scaffolding to help them memorize so they're better at some of the details that other folks that rely too heavily on their mental imagery. I don't know of any studies on chess in particular (though I haven't looked) but I would imagine that something similar could be at play here, where it might not be obvious that people with aphantasia are worse for these types of games. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7856239/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7856239/