The bizarre mental image strategy for recall of associated word pairs

Abstract

In two experiments, we investigated the influence of the type of image used by subjects, interaction between-images, imagery vividness, subjects image- forming capacity and time lapse for recall of matched pairs of words. New variables that were not included in previous research have been considered and a strict methodological control has been ensured. The influence of these variables on the recall of short lists of matched pairs of words (16 matched pairs) was analysed in the first experiment. The second experiment used long lists of words (32 matched pairs). The results obtained are in accordance with those of previous studies, and can be explained using the hypothesis of distinctiveness.