Imagery and the Recall of Movement Patterns

Abstract

Whether instructions to image improves the recall of simple movement patterns was investigated. A second purpose was to determine if recall of such patterns is related to their imagery-arousing value. Participants were presented a list of movement patterns varying in imagery values. Half of the participants were instructed to mentally image each pattern while the remaining participants were given no mnemonic strategy. Free recall was no better for those participants instructed to image than for those who were not. The majority of participants reported both imaging and verbally labelling the movement patterns, regardless of the mnemonic strategy they were requested to use. Recall performance was, however, a direct function of the imagery-arousing value of a pattern. The higher the imagery value, the better the recall.