On the relationship between visual imagery and visual perception: Evidence from priming studies

Two priming experiments using a perceptual identification task were conducted to explore the functional and representational overlap between visual imagery and visual perception. The first experiment included a study phase in which primes were either perceived or imaged objects and a perceptual identification test task in which targets were parts of studied and non-studied objects. Imagery primed identification when subjects were instructed to count the parts of the imaged objects in the study phase but not when they were instructed to focus on the global shape of the imaged objects. This result suggests that imagery involves perceptual representations identical to those involved in perception. It also suggests that the representational overlap between imagery and perception depends on the type of images generated, as some images may consist in global shapes only, whereas others may consist in detailed, multi-part shapes. In the second experiment, we used whole objects as target stimuli which provided subjects with more information to identify masked targets and thereby reduced top-down processing. Priming from imagery fell beneath significance, suggesting that this sort of priming is elicited in a large part by a transfer of top-down processes from study to test.