Sj. Mckelvie, THE VIVIDNESS OF VISUAL-IMAGERY QUESTIONNAIRE AS A PREDICTOR OF FACIAL RECOGNITION MEMORY PERFORMANCE, British journal of psychology, 85, 1994, pp. 93-104
After viewing 27 upright photographs of faces, 94 subjects took a forc
ed-choice recognition memory test in which the pairs were shown either
upright (N = 54) or inverted (N = 40), then completed Marks' (1973) V
ividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ). Although groups of 12
good and 12 poor visualizers representing the lower and upper 30 per
cent of VVIQ scores were less accurate, slower to respond and less con
fident for inverted than upright faces, VVIQ status did not interact w
ith the effect of inversion. However, good visualizers were more confi
dent than poor visualizers, and VVIQ scores themselves were lower (ind
icating more vivid reports) in the upright than in the inverted condit
ion. It was also found that VVIQ scores were lower for more than for l
ess confident subjects, but only for those who were less accurate. The
se results contradict the hypothesis that the VVIQ reflects holistic p
rocessing, but support the hypothesis that it is contaminated by an in
strument factor. It is suggested that studies with the VVIQ should be
designed to avoid cueing effects of the criterion task, and that the V
VIQ should be accompanied by a test of general processing capacity to
identify subjects whose responses might be contaminated by confidence.