Are Images in Subjective Space?
I've interviewed a number of people about their imagery. Some I've asked to form images as we speak; others I've had wear random beepers during their normal daily activity, and they're reported having imagery at the "sampled" moments when the beep goes off. Interestingly, some people report that their images have a spatial location -- typically near their foreheads or some small distance directly in front of their foreheads (up to a couple feet) -- while others deny that their images are located in subjective space in this way: Neither in their heads, nor in front of their heads, nor anywhere else.
Now I wonder: Are these differing reports to be trusted? Do some people experience their imagery as located in subjective space, while others do not? Or is one or the other, or both, of the groups confused in some way?
Although I'm not especially optimistic about definitively answering that question, here's at least one thought about how, in principle, it might be testable. Maybe imagery interacts to some extent with vision. If you imagine something in some particular region of space you might be worse (or better) at seeing external objects in that region. If so, then maybe people whose imagery is subjectively located will have enhanced or diminished performance in perceptual tasks in regions of space associated with their imagery, while they are maintaining an image, compared to regions of space outside their usual imagery field; and not so for those who report imagery as having no subjective location.