There was a somewhat recent astonishing revelation that a lot of people are apparently unable to visualize things in their mind (which was interesting to both groups in different ways respectively), so I bet that if you don't visualize things in your mind, it won't help much with recollection.
I think it could depend a lot on how strong the person's other modalities of memory/imagination are. Some people commenting above mentioned they have good spatial memory despite poor ability to visualize, but others are bad at both of those. I could imagine handwriting having big benefits over typing for someone that has a strong sensorimotor memory for example, even if they can't visualize much.
Personally I don't have much visualization ability, and I don't think note taking helps me at all in remembering things that can be easily verbally encoded, for example a history class. But taking notes in certain college math courses seemed to make a big difference, even when I never looked at them again.
I'm not sure whether it's directly a memory thing (perhaps drawing stuff by hand could subconsciously affect recall), or that I use my own shitty drawings as a weak substitute for visualization thereby making it easier for me to conceptualize highly spatial topics. But in any event I think the subject matter could also be a mediating factor.
Tangentially related, but this is why I really appreciate video recorded lectures, being able to pause for a few minutes to work through or look up visual demonstrations is so much more efficient than trying to go back and make sense of everything afterwards.
I think that Galton figured that one out at some point in the 1800s, no? There's a huge amount of variation in how precise your mind's eye is, from absolutely nothing to vague impressions to photo-real images.
IIRC it was dismissed by most people at the time though. I've only started to hear it discussed by people in psych/neuro academic departments in the last few years.
