The structure of visual and kinaesthetic imagery: a free association study.

A free association technique was used to investigate the semantic structure of three forms of encoding: verbal, visual imagery, and kinaesthetic imagery. Kinaesthetic imagery involves imagined bodily identification with the stimuli (animal names) and is included because of its possible involvement in creativity, and in view of the importance of enactive representation in cognitive development. The analysis of evoked associations in terms of the propositional relations they bear to the stimuli, shows that the actor-action-object framework is particularly important in kinaesthetic imagery, and the whole-part structure in visual imagery. Verbal representation gives rise to various abstract and phonemically based association types. The relevance of these findings to creativity and to the concept of semantic memory is discussed.