Imagery Vs Rehearsal

Introduction
Bower’s theory demonstrated that mental imagery aided memory and improved the chances of
information retrieval. The study that supported this theory was the study done by Bower (1972)
on mental imagery. The aim of the study was to study the effect of creating a mental image to
aid verbal recall. Participants of the study were given 100 different cards, one at a time and
each card had two unrelated nouns. Then they were asked to memorise the pair of words by
repetition also known as rote-rehearsal, or they were asked to create a mental image where the
the two items are linked together. After the participants were done memorising, they were asked
to take a recall test. 80% of the participants that used the method of mental imagery recalled
their words, compared to the 45% recall rate of the rote-rehearsals’. The pair of words that were
recalled most were the pairs that created the most vivid, unusual or dynamic image. The results
prove that creating a visual image can aid humans in recalling and retrieving information. This
conclusion is the result of the increased relational association that is produced by the mental
image. Although this study can provide experimental support for a method or strategy that
humans can use, it is flawed because people do not usually memorise lists of common nouns.
Questions are raised if this method is applicable in the fields of science or abstract concepts. A
theory that can be used to support Bower’s theory is Paivio’s dual coding theory. His theory
states there are two ways that a person could store, recall and retrieve information. Visual and
verbal information are processed differently and through different parts of the human brain; thus
creating separate representations for information. (Wikipedia) Humans can recall information
through visual and verbal codes, simultaneously or individually. For example a person has
stored the stimulus concept of “cat” as both the word “cat” and as a mental image of a cat. Then
they are able to recall the information through the image or the word, increasing the chances of
retrieving the information compared to just one coding. Through further study, Paivio proposed
that if words evoke a mental image, there is a higher chance of the words being remembered,
which supports Bower’s theory of mental imagery aiding associate learning. The dual-code
theory can be supported by the study that Begg and Paivio conducted. The aim of the study was
to observe how wording and meaning of abstract and concrete sentences could influence the
rate of the sentences being remembered. Participants were presented with two types of
sentences, one being concrete and the other being abstract. Then they were given distracter
sentences that resembled one of the sentences but the wording and meaning of the sentences
were different. Subjects were then asked to point out the changes in the sentences. Results
showed that, for concrete sentences the participants noticed changes in meaning more than the
changes in wording. On the other hand, for abstract sentences, participants recognised word
changes better than meaning changes. Since concrete sentences are easier to create a mental
image compared to abstract sentences, the ability to recall information was affected, proving
that being able to evoke a mental image plays an important role in the retrieval of information.
This experiment is inspired by the Bower (1972) study. The aim of this experiment is to
determine whether mental imagery or rote-rehearsal is the more effective method in retrieving
information. Null Hypothesis: The results will be completely due to chance and will have no
relation to the way participants recalled the information presented to them at the beginning of
the experiment. Research Hypothesis: The percentage rate of recall for the group that used
mental imagery will be higher compared to the group that uses rote-rehearsal.

Methods
Design
The design we have used for this experiment was the independent samples design, so the
participants were separated into two groups, and were put into two different conditions. We
created two groups because we had to compare the dependent variable, which was the amount
of words recalled. The amount of words recalled was dependent on the independent variable,
which was the method that the participants were asked to used when the sentences were said
out loud. Five out of nine of the participants were asked to rate how easy it was to create a
mental image of the sentences while the other four were asked to rate how easy it was to
pronounce the sentences; therefore the amount of words recalled varied. The nine participants
chosen were students that did not study psychology to avoid. Ethical considerations were
followed when all participants were asked to sign an informed consent form, and they were told
that the results would remain anonymous and that they could withdraw from the experiment at
any point of the experiment.
Participants
The target population of this experiment was the students that attended an international school
in Yangon. The students that were chosen were IB students that did not take IB Psychology
because for this experiment a mastery of the English language was necessary to make sure
they were able to recall the words that were presented and that they did not have prior
knowledge of the experiment. Our sample group consisted of 9 people (N=9) and they were
chosen through “opportunity sampling” because they were the only students that were available
for us.
Materials:
1. Pencils
2. Consent Form (Appendix 4)
3. Standardised Instructions (Appendix 5)
4. Debrief Form (Appendix 6)
5. Worksheet with filler tasks
6. List of Questions (Appendix 3)
7. List of Sentences (Appendix 2)
8. Instructions of Condition 1 (Appendix 7)
9. Instructions of Condition 2 (Appendix 8)

Procedure:
1. Divide participants into two groups
2. Hand out consent forms to meet ethical considerations
3. Hand out a sheet of paper to the participants that is numbered 1-20 to write their answers.
4. We will give one group Instructions of Condition 1 and the other group Instructions of
Condition 2
5. Then we will read the list of sentences
6. After rating the sentences they will be asked to flip the sheet of paper.
7. The participants will be asked to answer the questions from the List of Questions
8. The answers should be answered in the form of an adjective followed by a noun.
10. The answer sheets will then be collected and the debrief will be read out to them.

Results
From the raw data (Appendix 1) it can be seen that the the amount of words recalled when
using mental imagery was significantly higher than the technique of pronunciation. Participants
that went through condition one had an average of 20 words recalled while the participants that
went through condition two had a low average of 3.2 words recalled. We used the mean of the
results because we had a small amount of participants. Since the standard deviation was high, it
can be said that our data was spread out. Even though our standard deviation is high the data
still corroborates our hypothesis.

Discussion: Bower’s theory of mental imagery demonstrated that mental imagery aided memory
and improved the chances of information retrieval. The results of the study that we conducted
support this theory, because the average number of words recalled when using mental imagery
was 20 while the average number of words recalled when using pronunciation was 3.2. Thus we
can see a significant improvement in one condition compared to the other. Since the study done
by Bower proved that creating a visual image can aid humans in recalling and retrieving
information, our findings validated his results. Although our findings show that creating a visual
image can increase the amount of words recalled, we did not compare the technique of using a
visual image to the technique of rote rehearsal, while Bower’s study compared these two
conditions. Our experiment failed to compare rote rehearsal to mental imagery because our
second condition (Appendix 8) was to use the technique of pronouncing the word; therefore
based on our experiment we cannot state that creating a mental image is a more effective
technique than rote rehearsal. However, our findings do not validate Paivios’s theory that if
words evoke a mental image, there is a higher chance of the words being recalled. The study
that Begg and Paivio conducted compared the two conditions of remembering concrete
sentences and abstract sentences. The aim of their study was to observe how abstract and
concrete sentences could influence the rate of sentences being remembered, while our aim was
to compare rote rehearsal and mental imagery. This meant that their study focused on the
sentences of the experiment while we focused on the technique that the participants used to
recall the words. We did instruct (Appendix 7,8) our participants to rate how hard it was to create
mental images of the sentences on a scale of 1-5, but we did not consider this scale when we
collected our data. Thus, for improvements we could see if sentences that were easier to create
a mental image resulted in an improvement of words being recalled, to compare our study to the
Paivio’s theory. Although our study differed from Begg and Paivio’s, our findings can somewhat
still support Paivio’s theory. Our findings show that if participants create a mental image of the
sentences that were read out to them, the rate of the words remembered increased. Likewise,
the results of the Begg and Paivio’s study proved that the concrete sentences which effectively
evoked a mental image had a higher rate of being recalled. Thus, both experiments showed that
creating a mental image of a sentence can improve the chances of it being remembered.
However we still cannot prove that mental imagery is a more effective technique than rote
rehearsal. One big limitation of this experiment is that our second condition was using
pronunciation as a technique. By pronouncing and saying the sentences out loud, there is a
minimal amount of rehearsal, but it cannot be considered as rote rehearsal. Since the aim of our
study was to compare the technique of creating a mental image compared to rote rehearsal, our
experiment differed from our aim. Thus it is important for us to choose an experiment that could
help us investigate our aim and support our hypothesis. However the technique of pronunciation
can be linked to a small extent with rote rehearsal. Both techniques are considered as shallow
processing therefore when comparing it to the technique of creating a mental image which is
considered as deep processing, pronouncing the sentences could serve as a similar
replacement of rote rehearsal. Hence, our results can still prove how mental imagery is a more
effective way of remembering compared to other shallow processing techniques.
Another flaw of our experiment is that our findings might contain errors due to our instructions.
We instructed our participants to either rate how easy it was to create a mental image 7 or rate
how easy it was to pronounce the sentences. But since we do not know how the participants
processed the sentences it is a possibility that a participant instinctively created an image of the
sentence in addition to pronouncing it. Thus this could effect the amount of words recalled,
which could lead to inconsistent data. To make our results more consistent it is an option for us
to change the instructions from rating the difficulty level of the techniques, to making the
participants use the techniques. This will lead to a smaller margin for error because there is less
of a possibility that participants will use other techniques of memory processing. However this
does not completely assure that our findings are without errors or inconsistency. In conclusion,
the aim of this study was to investigate whether mental imagery or rote rehearsal is the more
effective in retrieving information and this was successful to a certain extent. The
methodological limitations that we faced resulted in us not being able to achieve this aim.
However since our findings show that mental imagery is a more effective way of retrieving
information compared to pronunciation, which is a similar process to rote rehearsal, our null
hypothesis can be rejected while our experimental hypothesis can be supported to a certain
extent.