shooting of a drop of acid from the rind of the orange into the eye? The chance
ache in the head? The pleasant feeling connected with the exhilaration of a
beautiful morning? The feeling of perfect health? The pleasure connected with
partaking of a favorite food?
Power of Imagery Varies in Different People.—It is more than probable that
some of you cannot get perfectly clear images in all these lines, certainly not
with equal facility; for the imagery from any one sense varies greatly from
person to person. A celebrated painter was able, after placing his subject in a
chair and looking at him attentively for a few minutes, to dismiss the subject and
paint a perfect likeness of him from the visual image which recurred to the artist
every time he turned his eyes to the chair where the sitter had been placed. On
the other hand, a young lady, a student in my psychology class, tells me that she
is never able to recall the looks of her mother when she is absent, even if the
separation has been only for a few moments. She can get an image of the form,
with the color and cut of the dress, but never the features. One person may be
able to recall a large part of a concert through his auditory imagery, and another
almost none.
In general it may be said that the power, or at least the use, of imagery decreases
with age. The writer has made a somewhat extensive study of the imagery of
certain high-school students, college students, and specialists in psychology
averaging middle age. Almost without exception it was found that clear and
vivid images played a smaller part in the thinking of the older group than of the
younger. More or less abstract ideas and concepts seemed to have taken the
place of the concrete imagery of earlier years.
Imagery Types.—Although there is some difference in our ability to use
imagery of different sensory types, probably there is less variation here than has
been supposed. Earlier pedagogical works spoke of the visual type of mind, or
the audile type, or the motor type, as if the possession of one kind of imagery
necessarily rendered a person short in other types. Later studies have shown this
view incorrect, however. The person who has good images of one type is likely
to excel in all types, while one who is lacking in any one of the more important
types will probably be found short in all.[4] Most of us probably make more use
of visual and auditory than of other kinds of imagery, while olfactory and
gustatory images seem to play a minor rôle.