INFLUENCE OF IMAGING ABILITY ON WORD TRANSFORMATION

In the present study, we examined whether individual differences in im aging ability affect visual word recognition. Poor and vivid imagers p erformed a naming task that involved nonreversed (e.g., JUMP) and reve rsed (e.g., PMUJ) words (Experiment 1). Poor and vivid imagers were al so tested on a naming task that was controlled for verbal ability; all the words were reversed and presentation time was varied (Experiment 2). In both experiments, imaging ability interacted with task difficul ty, suggesting that individual differences in imaging ability affect v isual word recognition. Specifically, the present data suggest that po or imagers may be less efficient than vivid imagers at processing word s analytically. The data are interpreted within a limited-capacity, hy brid, word recognition model, in which words can be processed as eithe r word-level or letter-level codes.