Does Visual Imagery Impact Memory Efficiency For Thematically Related Pairs?

Mental imagery (MI) ability, commonly assessed using self-report measures such as the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire and the Object–Spatial Imagery Questionnaire, has been linked to associative processing and memory performance. Visual working memory (VWM) refers to the short-term maintenance of visual information and is limited in capacity. Previous work has shown that people remember object pairs more accurately when the objects form a meaningful relationship than when pairs are unrelated. The present study examined whether individual differences in MI ability influence memory performance for thematically related and unrelated object pairs and whether imagery ability predicts the magnitude of the thematic-relatedness advantage. One hundred undergraduate students at The Pennsylvania State University completed a 5-alternative forced-choice VWM task administered online. Participants encoded four object pairs that were either all related or all unrelated and then selected the object not previously shown. After the task, participants completed a reduced 16-item Object–Spatial Imagery Questionnaire assessing object and spatial imagery tendencies. Memory accuracy was significantly higher for related pairs than for unrelated pairs. Higher OSIQ scores were associated with greater overall accuracy, with small but significant correlations for both conditions. However, imagery ability did not predict the size of the relatedness advantage, as correlations with difference scores were nonsignificant. These findings suggest that imagery ability relates to general VWM performance but is not the primary contributor to the thematic-relatedness benefit. Thematic relationships between objects appear to improve memory efficiency through mechanisms not accounted for by individual differences in imagery ability, contributing to understanding associative encoding in visual working memory.Keywords: visual imagery ability, memory performance, associative encoding, thematically related object pairs, visual working memory