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.