Book review

In two experiments, participants were asked to perform simple action statements or to imagine performing the actions one, two, or four times in a single study session. The lag between repetitions could vary from 5 to 10 intervening items in Experiment 1 or be fixed at 0 and 4 in Experiment 2. In a test session that occurred either 24 or 48 hours later, participants were instructed to recognise statements only if they had occurred during the first session and, if recognised, to tell whether the action statement had been carried out or imagined. The primary finding was that it is possible to obtain an imagination inflation effect (that is, as repeated imaginations increase, participants are more likely to remember an action as performed) using a within-list paradigm. However, this outcome occurred only for spaced repetitions. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that repeated imagination increases the level of familiarity, which may, in turn, generate this memory illusion.