Reaction times of Ss high or low in imagery ability were examined under instructions to elicit a verbal associate or arouse an image to concrete and abstract noun stimuli. Latencies were significantly shorter for high than low imagers, for concrete than abstract words, and for verbal than imagery instructions. One interaction showed that imagery latencies were shorter to concrete than to abstract stimuli, whereas the latencies of verbal associations did not differ for die two types of words; another revealed that the relative superiority of high over low imagers in reaction speed was greater when the stimuli were abstract Correlational data suggested that verbal associations may be mediated by both verbal and imaging! processes, thus favouring high imagers in both instruction conditions, and that self-reports of imagery ability can reliably predict imagine! behaviour.
Male and female subjects who differed on measures of imagery ability were tested for incidental recall in two experiments involving pictures and words as stimuli. In one experiment, high-imagery males surpassed their low-imagery counterparts in intentional free recall of words, but the reverse relation occurred with females. No relation was obtained between imagery ability and incidental reoall for stimulus colour. However, the colours were recalled better when associated with pictures rather than words as stimuli, suggesting an effect of stimulus concreteness on visual memory. The orientating task in the second experiment was item recognition. High-imagery subjects were more accurate than low-imagers in the recognition task, and highimagery females (but not males) surpassed their low-imagery counterparts in incidental recall of the stimuli. * This questionnaire, devised within our laboratory, has not as yet been published.(t = 0.96; d.f. = 34).
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