ABSTRACT
The issue centres on appreciating the different ways in which the content of visual imagery can be generated from memory, and how this may alter the strategic retrieval processes invoked. In one commonly used paradigm, participants are first presented with a set of objects to encode as memoranda, and then cued to visually recall the items that have been encoded (e.g., Kosslyn et al., 1995b, 1999; Le Bihan et al., 1993; Thompson et al., 2001; Wheeler et al., 2000). A second common paradigm has relied on more general or semanticbased knowledge for imagery generation, where participants are simply given the names of common visual objects as the cues for imagery (e.g., D'Esposito et al., 1997; Mellet et al., 1998b). Although both paradigms may give rise to vivid imagery in the mind's eye, the paradigms may also lead to nontrivial differences
in the strategic processes engaged during the retrieval of imagery content from memory.
