The Role of Visual Mental Imagery in the Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff: A Preliminary Investigation

Subjects who were given imagery instruction prior to receiving the stimulus material required significantly more time to learn the material. The additional time indicates imagery use. The instructed subjects also had significantly faster retrieval time on a recognition posttest. Thus, there is an inverse relationship between learning time and retrieval time for imaged information. The posttest scores of the instructed subjects were not significantly higher than the uninstructed subjects. The two groups also had similar perceptions of their use of mental imagery. Mental imagery is proposed as a technique to help reduce the speed-accuracy tradeoff during performance. Imagery needs to be investigated further as a type of task-specific processing, since it involves deeper information processing than other cognitive strategies.

Mnemonic Systems in Free Recall

A variety of mnemonic instructions were compared in a final recall of 6 lists of 10 words each. Various types of imagery instruction were contrasted with verbal mnemonic techniques on both abstract and concrete words. None of the instructions influenced recall of abstract word lists. On concrete lists both imagery and story construction instructions led to improved recall. An analysis of clustering indicated a significant degree of organization on the basis of E-contrived lists which was directly related to recall performance. The several “peg-word” techniques did not produce strong recall effects even on concrete word lists. A possible explanation was offered in terms of potential conflict of retrieval strategies for the “peg-word” conditions. Arguments implicate imagery in all effective mnemonic techniques.