Self-rated imagery and vividness of task pictures in relation to visual memory

Marks (1973) and Gur & Hilgard (1975) have reported success in predicting performance in visual-memory tasks from scores in a questionnaire of self-rated vividness of imagery, i.e. the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ; Marks, 1973). The results obtained were attributed to the use of the VVIQ and pictures with a high degree of vividness in the memory task. These findings were disconfirmed in two experiments in which the VVIQ was used and vivid pictures were presented in the memory tasks. Subjects were to judge whether pairs of similar, successively presented pictures were identical or not. The results indicated that subjects rated as 'good' imagers did not perform differently from those rated as 'poor' imagers. The influences of demand characteristics in the previous experiments and differences in experimental procedures were referred to as possible causes of the observed inconsistencies in results. It is also suggested that questionnaires of self-rated visual imagery are ineffective as predictors of performance, since they only cover a limited aspect of imagery.