Effect of verbal interpretation on recall and recognition of ambiguous pictorial stimuli

66 subjects characterized as either good or poor visualizers were presented ambiguous pictorial stimuli accompanied by either a verbal interpretation or no interpretation. Both recall and recognition measures for the stimuli were obtained. Good visualizers showed superior recall and recognition compared with poor visualizers in the absence of verbal interpretation. Good and poor visualizers did not differ on either measure of memory when an interpretation accompanied the stimuli. Good visualizers performed equally well either with or without an interpretation, while poor visualizers performed significantly better with an interpretation.