Reported mediators and individual differences in mental imagery

Abstract

This study concerns the use of postlearning questionnaires to discover the strategies employed by subjects in memory tasks. Experiment 1 showed that the proportion of items for which subjects reported the use of imaginal mediators was an excellent predictor of their overall performance. Experiment 2 showed that this was true for concrete material, but not for abstract material. It is suggested that mediator reports provide an effective way of investigating individual differences in the use of mental imagery. © 1978 Psychonomic Society, Inc.