Selective interference during the retrieval of visual images

Twenty-six subjects memorized lists of (low I and high I) noun pairs under imagery or verbal mediation instructions. At recall the subjects were presented a digit (“1” or “2”) either auditorily or visually as an interfering stimulus.

Visual interference was found to selectively affect the retrieval of high I response terms. Also, the retrieval of nouns studied by imagery mediation was found to be selectively disrupted by visual interference.

These results suggest that the qualities of a visual image are retained all the way from image acquisition to retrieval, and that the visual components of images generated at the acquisition stage are probably not lost by subsequent coding processes.