Abstract
Instructing subjects to make images of word pairs greatly improves their memory for these pairs. It is commonly assumed that the memory improvement results from some advantage in memory of visual images over words. We show that the typical improvement in memory with imagery instructions that occurs in normal subjects also occurs in congenitally and totally blind adults. Hence, the mnemonic imagery effect cannot be explained with reliance on a mechanism that specifically relies on vision. We also demonstrate that the results cannot be explained in terms of imagery in nonvisual modalities.
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This experiment was conceived in a General Honors Psychology I course at the University of Pennsylvania taught by Paul Rozin and John Jonides in the fall of 1972. Robert Kahn was a member of that class who subsequently ran the experiment reported here under the supervision of J. J. and P. R. We gratefully acknowledge the helpful discussions with the class members in designing a pilot experiment (run by Cynthia Dell) which preceded this one. We also acknowledge the helpful criticism of an earlier manuscript by James Johnston, James McClelland, and Deborah Macmillan. This research was supported by a Sigma Xi grant to J. J. and an NIH physiological psychology training grant to the University of Pennsylvania. J. J. is a trainee under this grant. The authors are listed in alphabetical order.
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Jonides, J., Kahn, R. & Rozin, P. Imagery instructions improve memory in blind subjects. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 5, 424–426 (1975). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333288
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333288