On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:47:23 -0700, Miguel Roig wrote:
>Thanks, Mike. We had actually thought of the Flags Test. However, that one
>seems to be more a test of spatial ability than of mental imagery. Besides, the
>Flags Test  does not really tap 'clarity' of imagery, though I am not certain
>that there is a task-based test  that does. The Vividness of Visual Imagery
>Questionnare  is a good one, but we are looking for an alternate one.

Whether the Flags test is a measure of visual imagery or spatial ability
or both depends upon one's theoretical orientation.  Roger Shepard used
the original version as a basis for his mental rotation studies which helped
to provide a significant degree of scientific legitimacy to studies of imagery.
However, in extensions of Baddeley's working memory model, the visual-spatial
sketchpad is seen as one way to represent visual-spatial information while
others have argued for a separate spatial working memory that does not
require visual information (e.g., representation of the location of objects in
an environment based on other cues, such a sound localization).

I've looked at some of the literature on the VVIQ and though there appears
to be some problems with it (for example, see:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21494918 )
there is a recent publication on the psychometric properties of a revised
version of the VVIQ; see:
http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/04.22.PMS.113.5.454-460

On a side note, though I can understand the historical interest in imagery
vividness it is my impression that this is less of an issue in contemporary
cognitive psychology (i.e., work of Shepard, Kosslyn, Paivio, etc.).  Ron
Finke examined some of these issues in his research which he describes
in a 1990 Scientific American article; see:
http://sonify.psych.gatech.edu/~walkerb/classes/perception/readings/Finke1990.pdf


-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]

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