A dissociation of conscious visual imagery and visual short-term memory.
Two people who reported an impaired ability to form conscious visual images were tested. Compared to a control group of college students, these impaired visualizers were not impaired on two tests of visual short-term memory. Furthermore, they retained more digits in visual short-term memory than they could visualize. These results suggests that deficits in the ability to form conscious visual images can arise without visual short-term memory being impaired, and conscious visual imagery should not be equated with visual short-term memory.
Frick
R W
RW
University of Washington, Seattle 98195.
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*