Effect of selective visual interference on visualization.

The extent of visual processing involved in visualizing objects was investigated by the use of selective visual interference. Subjects read concrete words and visualized them. This produced an approximately ten-fold increase in the slope of the latencies of wholistic visualization as a function of set size compared to that when subjects responded after listening to the descriptions of the objects. Males produced significantly steeper slopes than females in both listening and reading conditions, indicating that they find visualization more difficult. It is concluded that the interference on the visualization task was in the main disrupting active visual processing as no spatial manipulation of the objects was required.