The effects of visual mental imagery and word concreteness on recognition memory

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Jennifer Spalten¹, Mark Wheeler¹; ¹Georgia Institute of Technology

The present study investigates the relationship between vividness abilities in mental visual imagery and long-term recognition of abstract versus concrete words. It was hypothesized that (a) vividness abilities for creating mental images differ from vividness abilities for recreating a previously shown image, (b) concrete words are easier to recognize than abstract words as supported by previous findings, and (c) individuals with stronger vividness abilities outperform weaker imagers on concrete word recognition. Two online experiments were performed with a total of 100 participants. The first experiment measured vividness using the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) and a modified mental image recreation VVIQ, followed by a 120-trial abstract-to-concrete word encoding task, subsequent old/new recognition tests, and a “mini” list old/new recognition task. The second experiment employed a similar design but focused on mental image vividness ratings during encoding and excluded the “mini” old/new task. Recognition performance was assessed using d-prime scores, and t-tests and linear regression models were used to test the significance of all findings. Results revealed distinct distributions between vividness abilities in creation and recreation of mental images, higher recognition performance on concrete compared to abstract words, and no evidence that vivid imagers outperformed weaker imagers on the word recognition tasks. Contrary to expectations, vividness ability did not appear to influence long-term recognition for either word type. These findings motivate subsequent study on whether incentives or task demands might encourage participants to rely more heavily on mental imagery during retrieval, thereby eliciting this effect.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Other