Personality differences in mental imagery and the effects on verbal memory

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Personality Psychology

Background:

• Individual differences in personality, such as extraversion and neuroticism, are known to influence cognitive functions.
• Visual imagery vividness and memory performance are key areas where personality may play a role.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of extraversion and neuroticism on visual imagery vividness.
• To examine how these personality traits affect memory recall for concrete and abstract nouns, including ambiguous words.

Main Methods:

• Selected groups of extraverts and introverts (n=15 each).
• Participants were tasked with remembering concrete, abstract, and lexically ambiguous concrete nouns.
• Assessed reported vividness of visual imagery and memory recall performance.

Main Results:

• Extraverts reported higher visual imagery vividness than introverts.
• Recall performance was highest for unambiguous concrete nouns, followed by concrete homonyms, then abstract nouns.
• Neuroticism, rather than extraversion, was the primary factor influencing recall differences across word types.

Conclusions:

• While extraversion correlates with imagery vividness, neuroticism is more strongly associated with memory recall variations.
• Context availability theory may better explain recall differences than dual coding theory in this context.
• Further research is needed to fully elucidate the complex interplay between personality, imagery, and memory.