Imagery From Inside Out, and Outside In

Extract

John Richardson's straightforward text on imagery is another book in the series Cognitive Psychology: A Modular Course and as such its purpose is to bring together research relevant to the topic of imagery in a format that can be easily understood by undergraduate psychology students. This book will certainly fulfill this purpose, although it may be even more useful for the student at undergraduate or graduate level who wishes to gain an overview or refresher course on imagery research in enough detail to act as a basis for further and more in-depth reading. It may also provide ideas for graduate research projects; imagery seems to lend itself to small projects that can be fairly easily carried out on normal participants with minimal equipment or complex computer programming. As we all have some ability to generate and manipulate mental images, the topic is intrinsically fascinating; we are all keen to know whether we can generate this image or rotate that one. Thus, whilst reading the book, I found myself answering many of the questions given as examples of various imagery questionnaires (am I a visualizer or a verbalizer?), and seeing how vividly I could imagine a daffodil hidden inside the torch held up by the Statue of Liberty. I imagine this adds to the effectiveness of the book; certainly it is effective as a means of holding the reader's attention.