I have very little visual imagination and have experienced the audiobook/running thing a lot, but only in one direction. Running by the same place will often make me think of something I heard there, but thinking about something I heard doesn't bring back the place.

I think I have aphantasia to some degree and have experienced what the OP is mentioning. Also handwriting is a good aid for me to remember things, particularly if it is written by hand. I don't need to review the notes but the act of putting it down sticks a bit better. I will also have to add that my memory is better at concepts and abstract things but not so good at details.

The handwriting thing makes sense, since I don't think aphantasia necessarily affects motor memory. Drawing/writing by hand could actually be more important for people with aphantasia in that case, since it could provide a motor memory that directly corresponds to something visual.

Also I think at the core of the "visualizing things in different parts of space" memory trick is just making good associations. If you're much better at verbal/internal monologue type of thinking you could still do something pretty similar, by mapping the things to memorize into a story.

Granted certain things are easier to map to a visual space than to language, but that's true in the other direction too. Anecdotally it takes a lot of effort for me to visualize things and I barely do it naturally, but I seem to have a much stronger internal monologue and a better memory for things people say than most of my friends. I wouldn't be surprised if poor visualizing abilities during development could strengthen verbal reasoning a bit like how blind people have other senses heightened.

I really hope research into aphantasia will become more commonplace, but a lot of it is speculation for now unfortunately.

Yeah, I am familiar with this technique, and have tried using it in the past (as my "spatial" memory is very good, despite a total lack of visual imagination), but I've never been successful.

Interesting, how do you experience spatial memories? Is it somehow encoded verbally, or via somatosensation? Or does it feel completely subconscious, like a Pavlovian reaction? Or something else?

I am bad at visualizing things from what I can subjectively tell, but as far as memory is concerned it's mainly the spatial memory tests where I perform poorly. So it's hard for me to imagine what recalling spatial memories is like, besides the assumption that people can probably visualize them.

It's kind of (but not exactly) like proprioception. Close your eyes and hold your hand out. Even without visualing (because we can't...), you know "where" it is. It feels a lot like that. I just have a good sense of where things are relative to me and each other.