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I am also a member of this club, and I think it's _very likely_ that aphantasics as a class have better 'spatial' skills/memory than typical, simply because we are forced to exercise that capability constantly.

Spatial mappings are essentially how I express memories that others seem to hold as mental images of some kind, many of those _essential to function_, like "how do I drive from A to B", "how do I accomplish this complex task", "how do I recognize a place I've been before" (that last one is.. an interesting issue, because it turns out the things I use to recognize a scene are _almost_ sufficiently unique, but _not quite_; I occasionally get locations confused entirely because their streets meet at the same angle/distances, or the hedge and building are similar heights).

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There is some truth in this, but evidence sometimes suggests worse visuospatial memory, at least under some very specific operationalizations. E.g. less detail can be remembered overall, even though crucial details remembered are the same: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10598423/

More likely than not there are tradeoffs to using strictly visual vs. visual+ vs. strictly non-visual mental models in all domains, and there is no universally optimal strategy (and that teams of mixed cognitive styles are best overall). You know, no free lunch.

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