Aphantasia (the lack of an inner visual image) and anendophasia (the lack of an inner voice) have
recently gathered significant interest in research and with the general public, though anendophasia is
less well-researched. Educational research has highlighted how each phenomenon may negatively
impact literacy skills, i.e. reading. Aphantasia has been linked to less emotional connection to stories,
poorer reading engagement, and worse comprehension. Though no existing reading research has
specifically focused on anendophasia, inner-speech was found to be important for silent reading, and
poorer inner-speech caused deficits in verbal working memory, which is integral to literacy skills.
Besides independent effects, it is possible that both phenomena may occur simultaneously, which
could have an even greater impact on literacy. However, the existing research has not studied these
phenomena together, and has overlooked developmental populations, with no measures of innerspeech or voluntary visual images which have been psychometrically assessed for children and
adolescents. These insights led to the design of three studies with the aim of developing an
understanding of anendophasia and aphantasia and their potential educational impacts. Study 1 will
examine whether anendophasia and aphantasia interact within an adult population. Study 2 will
identify if the phenomena are associated with poorer literacy skills and learning. Study 3 will identify
whether the effects seen in Study 1 are also seen in developing readers and spellers (i.e. earlysecondary school children), and which questions are useful for exploring inner-speech and voluntary visual images in adolescents, contributing to revised age-appropriate scales.