Mental imagery

Mental imagery instruction teaches readers to construct images that closely represent the content of what was read and understood. In 1986, after instructing less-skilled fourth- and fifth-grade readers in imagery training, Linda B. Gambrell and Ruby J. Bales had them read stories with inconsistencies like those in the 1979 Markman study mentioned above and instructed them “to make a picture in your mind to help determine if there is anything that is not clear and easy to understand about the story.” Control students, that is, those without the imagery training, were simply asked to “do whatever you can do to help determine if anything is not clear and easy to understand about the story.” The results were that imagery-trained readers were more likely to detect inconsistencies than the controls. In seven studies with students in grades two through eight, the NRP found that mental imagery instruction led to modest increases in memory for the text that was imaged and improved reader detection of text inconsistencies.