Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 22, Issue 12, Pages 1535-1542Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0956797611417134
Keywords
mental imagery; visual attention; visual memory; visual perception; cognition; individual differences; metacognition; visual attention; introspection; short-term memory; binocular rivalry; bistable perception; consciousness
Categories
Funding
- NEI NIH HHS [R01 EY14202, P30-EY008126, R01 EY017082] Funding Source: Medline
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Can people evaluate phenomenal qualities of internally generated experiences, such as whether a mental image is vivid or detailed? This question exemplifies a problem of metacognition: How well do people know their own thoughts? In the study reported here, participants were instructed to imagine a specific visual pattern and rate its vividness, after which they were presented with an ambiguous rivalry display that consisted of the previously imagined pattern plus an orthogonal pattern. On individual trials, higher ratings of vividness predicted a greater likelihood that the imagined pattern would appear dominant when the participant was subsequently presented with the binocular rivalry display. Off-line self-report questionnaires measuring imagery vividness also predicted individual differences in the strength of imagery bias over the entire study. Perceptual bias due to mental imagery could not be attributed to demand characteristics, as no bias was observed on catch-trial presentations of mock rivalry displays. Our findings provide novel evidence that people have a good metacognitive understanding of their own mental imagery and can reliably evaluate the vividness of single episodes of imagination.
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