Autobiographical recall and visual imagery

If high visual imagery is a component of successful autobiographical recall for personal episodes, then those participants who have high imagery should have greater autobiographical recall for personal episodes. This hypothesis was tested by giving 30 selected participants, 15 who had high and 15 low visual imagery, 90 sec. to recall personal episodic information from three time periods in their lives. Also assessed were the effects of visual imagery on autobiographical recall for personal semantic and nonpersonal semantic information (vegetables and adjectives). Level of visual imagery was significantly related only for the group with lower visual imagery, who recalled more adjectives. The implications of the results for the semantic and episodic memory distinction within autobiographical memory were discussed.