Does It Kill the Imagination Dead? The Effect of Film Versus Reading on Mental Imagery

Abstract

The polemic idea that media “rots children’s minds” and that reading, in contrast, stimulates the imagination is not new, but is theoretically problematic and has largely escaped empirical falsification. A key aspect of imagination is mental imagery, namely the internal sensorimotor simulation of external events before the mind’s eye, ear, nose, and so forth. Here, a novel experiment tests whether viewing film clips in comparison to reading differently affects adults’ (n = 239) mental imagery, using a preregistered, within-subjects, randomized, blinded, and counter-balanced experimental design. Mental imagery response latencies after exposure to film clips or reading figuratively rich texts were modeled as a function of time using an mental comparison task (MCT). Further, film clips were either fast-paced or slow-paced. Compared to reading, viewing film clips resulted in initially slower MCT performance, as evidenced by a significant Media x Time interaction. However, contrary to expectation, there was no statistically significant difference between fast-paced and slow-paced clips on the MCT. Findings suggest that reading stimulates mental imagery compared to viewing films, which has implications for education and society, opening up new avenues for future research and educational practice.