Harvard University assistant professor Tomer Ullman conducted a cognitive science study on mental imagery and found that people are often “noncommittal” to the details of their mental images. In the study, participants were asked to visualize a person walking into a room and knocking a ball off a table, and were then quizzed on various properties of the scene. The results showed that most participants only visualized a subset of the properties, with details such as the person’s hair color often being overlooked. The study sheds light on the nature of mental imagery and has implications for gathering eyewitness testimonies.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/images-in-the-minds-eye-are-quick-sketches-that-lack-simple-real-world-details1/