VVIQ scoring and interpretation

What the 16-to-80 number on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire actually means to people who took it — cutoffs, percentages, and the awkwardness of bottoming out the scale.

What people actually say

Where the cutoff sits

Posters trade the same handful of numbers — 16 floor, 80 ceiling, <32 as the research threshold — and point newcomers to aphantasia.com.

"Check out aphantasia.com. Take the VVIQ. Researchers consider <32 to be aphantasia. Around 32 is hypophantasia. 16 is minimum." 2022 · t1_iwc37sr ↗

"I think the cutoff is 18, there are 16 questions meaning that the lowest possible score is 16. A score of 18 or below is to allow leeway." 2021 · t1_gjvoqsc ↗

"Dance et al [link] in 2022 found a prevalence of around ~4% (1 in 25) for individuals who scored <32 on the VVIQ and ~1% (1 in 100) for those who scored 16 (the minimum)." 2023 · t1_jb4wo83 ↗

Reading the number you got

People try to translate their raw score into a meaningful category — sometimes inventing their own percentage scale to do it.

"Interesting, I scored 27. So if the scores on this test go from 16 to 80 then a score of 16 would be 100% aphant and a score of 80 would be 0%. With 64 possible scores above 16 each point is 1.5625% less that 100%, so I'm \~82.8% Aphant" 2022 · t1_iwcr6yd ↗

"The VVIQ asks 16 questions and you should get a sum of the points scored with each answer." 2025 · t1_maq0166 ↗

"In the low area of scoring, every single point matches." 2025 · t1_maq0166 ↗

"There is a test you can take. It's called a VVIQ test. You can do a search and pick one. There is a score at the end. The \"lowest\" you can score is a 16 on the test I took, which means I'm completely \"mind blind.\"" 2026 · t1_nz60o4c ↗

Bottoming out at 16

For many full aphants, every question gets the same lowest answer, which makes the test feel pointless and the resulting 16 feel both definitive and a little absurd.

"I think OP may mean things like the VVIQ score which is the most irritating test to many full aphants, I cant remember how many questions there are, but when the answer to every single one is \"no image at all\" its an irritating test to take." 2026 · t1_nxob4t7 ↗

"I score flat 16, whole idea of anything else then \"know i am thinking about\" is preposterous for me." 2026 · t1_o1l2u03 ↗

"Same here. But I answered 1 for all 16 questions so my score must be 16." 2025 · t1_masf0cy ↗

Gatekeeping at the minimum

A recurring tension: people who scored slightly above 16 feel pressure from the community to have hit the absolute floor.

"I forget what the absolute minimum score is but I see a lot of people here talk as if you didn't score the absolute minimum you don't really have aphantasia." 2018 · t1_e7d07k8 ↗

"I see so many people talk though like anything over 16 isn't Aphantasia despite the range going up to 30." 2018 · t1_e7d6u23 ↗

"I usually score a couple of points above minimum as I feel like there's something that's maybe there but maybe not and can't really tell." 2018 · t1_e7d6u23 ↗

Across the years

The VVIQ vocabulary in the bundle is strikingly stable across the eight populated years (2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026). The same anchor numbers — 16 floor, 80 ceiling, <32 cutoff — recur in 2018 and again in 2026, and the gatekeeping complaint about scoring "anything over 16" is already articulated in 2018 (chunks 610fd95c233bcb4f5c6a, c54dfc51303d153fb7fe) and still surfaces in 2026's "I score flat 16" comments. The 2023 chunk citing Dance et al's 2022 prevalence figures (~4% under 32, ~1% at exactly 16) is the only point where the discussion gets explicitly empirical; otherwise the genre is folk-interpretation of one's own number. Volume rises modestly into 2026 (6 chunks) without changing the script.

Volume

Cross-references

• themes/tests_apple_test.md — the apple test is the informal triage that usually sends posters to the VVIQ for a numeric score.