Effects of eye movements on the rate of discovery and the vividness of visual images

Two studies investigated the effects of eye movements on the rate of discovery and the vividness of visual images. Eye movements were manipulated by having three conditions: (1) The Ss were instructed to make eye movements while generating images to noun pairs; (2) the Ss were instructed not to make eye movements, but to think about making eye movements while generating images to noun pairs; (3) the Ss were instructed not to make eye movements and not to think about making eye movements while generating images to noun pairs. In addition, the ease of generating images was manipulated by using noun pairs that differed in their image-evoking capacity; five of the noun pairs consisted of high imagery-evoking nouns and five consisted of low imagery-evoking nouns. The two experiments were similar, with the exception that a between-groups design was used in Experiment 1, whereas Experiment 2 employed a within-Ss design. The results of both experiments showed highly significant effects of noun-pair type on both the rate of discovery and the vividness of images, with the fastest and most vivid images occuring to the high-imagery noun pairs. The effects of the eye-movement conditions on the rate of discovery and the vividness of the images were not significant in either experiment, and these findings are discussed in terms of the relationship of ocular activity to imagery.