Makes sense. I’d like to see an experiment done with reading comprehension as well as real memories. When I read something, I hear and see it. I’m reading it out loud in my mind and I either have instant visual associations with certain words (e.g. when I read the word aphantasia I think of the hippo from Fantasia, when I see the word tea I instantly ‘see’ a teacup) or I visualise the scene (like where they have the quote from the man who can’t imagine music, I ‘see’ and ‘hear’ it like it’s a TV interview). So I suspect I’m going to remember it better than someone who purely reads the text - but maybe not! Maybe people who don’t do all the ‘translation’ work to turn text into audio/visuals will in fact turn out to be MORE efficient at remembering.

I have no idea how reading would work without at least hearing it though. If you told me to read without doing this stuff it would be like telling me to think without having thoughts. Impossible.