Having a "visual memory" has nothing to do with it. (Everyone who can see has visual memory, except possibly aphantasiacs, and it's generally the strongest of most people's memories.)

If you can imagine something happening in your mind's eye, then you can also see how your visual memory can be created. You're "seeing" something in your head that is not actually happening. This vision can turn into a memory. Heck, I have a recurring daydream that I have so often I can think of it as a memory.

There's no indication that any of the subjects in these various studies were not using visual memory, and the descriptions they used of their memories matched that.