EFFECTS OF PARENTAL FILTER ON REPORTED VIVIDNESS OF IMAGERY

127 undergraduates (66 women, 61 men) completed experimental forms of Ahsen's Adapted Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (AA-VVIQ) in which the 16 items of Marks' Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnair e (VVIQ) are rated separately with either mother or father in mind. Wh en the two ratings were made side-by-side for each item and those for the father filter were given first, there was some evidence of dimmer father- than mother-filtered imagery for women. However, this effect d id not appear when the mother-filtered ratings were given first, when all items were rated under one parental filter before being rated with the other, or when the filter instruction was given only before the f irst four items (which refer to a relative or friend). These results d o not support claims that reported imagery is generally dimmer under t he father than under the mother filter, but it was suggested that dimm er father- than mother-filtered imagery for women may be an order effe ct or may appear when raters freely compare their images under the two filters. Because scores were highly correlated (rs > .80) across filt ers, it was concluded that the choice of a parent for the first four i tems of Marks' VVIQ does not jeopardize the use of the inventory as a research instrument to classify people as good or poor visualizers.