John Richardson's straightforward text on imagery is another book in the series Cognitive Psychology: A Modular Course and as such its purpose is to bring together research relevant to the topic of imagery in a format that can be easily understood by undergraduate psychology students. This book will certainly fulfill this purpose, although it may be even more useful for the student at undergraduate or graduate level who wishes to gain an overview or refresher course on imagery research in enough detail to act as a basis for further and more in-depth reading. It may also provide ideas for graduate research projects; imagery seems to lend itself to small projects that can be fairly easily carried out on normal participants with minimal equipment or complex computer programming. As we all have some ability to generate and manipulate mental images, the topic is intrinsically fascinating; we are all keen to know whether we can generate this image or rotate that one. Thus, whilst reading the book, I found myself answering many of the questions given as examples of various imagery questionnaires (am I a visualizer or a verbalizer?), and seeing how vividly I could imagine a daffodil hidden inside the torch held up by the Statue of Liberty. I imagine this adds to the effectiveness of the book; certainly it is effective as a means of holding the reader's attention.

The book is divided into six chapters, the first being a brief introduction and explanation of how the book is structured. The book's substance is contained in the middle four chapters, each of which describes a different aspect of imagery research. Chapter 2 begins with the layperson's view of imagery as a subjective experience, and takes the reader through the rise, fall, and rise again of using verbal accounts of one's own subjective experience of mental images as a valid (or otherwise) research method to further our understanding of imagery. One of the strengths of the book is that it is liberally sprinkled with examples from actual questionnaires and examples of research stimuli from the past through to current research. For example, Galton's “breakfast-table questionnaire” on visualizing familiar objects, published in 1883, is reproduced in full on p. 11.

Chapter 3 turns to imagery as an internal representation. It summarizes research demonstrating that our spatial abilities are related to the quality of our imagery while performing specific tasks, and that imagined objects can be manipulated along physical and abstract dimensions as if they were physical objects. This chapter is particularly strong in its review of the literature on research using the assessment of brain damaged patients as a means of exploring both the cognitive and neural bases of imagery. For example, the research on unilateral neglect of representational space, popular in the late 1970s to 1980s (e.g., Bisiach & Luzzatti, 1978) is described, as is research using split-brain patients demonstrating that the left hemisphere is capable of imagery. The development of Kosslyn's model linking visual perception and visual imagery is described, including the idea that there is a visual buffer or scratchpad in the posterior cortex where we “view” recalled or constructed visual images.

Chapter 4 travels outside the mind of the research participant and concentrates on imagery as a stimulus attribute that can be manipulated by the researcher. Paivio's research in the 1970s on the concreteness or imageability of words is well covered, and again there is a section on research with brain damaged participants. Of particular interest is the research showing that, in contrast to normal participants, patients with closed head injury or Huntington's disease have difficulty using the imageability of words to enhance their ability to remember the words. Patients with focal damage to either hemisphere do not lose the ability to use the imageability of words to enhance their memory, suggesting that both hemispheres are involved in this skill.

Chapter 5 is the chapter that will be most useful for those readers interested in the improvement or rehabilitation of memory, as it describes the research on imagery as a memory aid, and in what circumstances it is effective. This is the chapter that has the reader checking out their own visualising skills, and trying out some of the mnemonic strategies described. Each chapter ends with a brief summary of the main points, and the final “conclusion” chapter reviews the essential points made by each of the four main chapters once again.

Overall, this is a short, clearly written, to-the-point review of the main imagery literature, coherently organised according to four different ways of conceptualizing imagery research. This makes it appropriate as a supplementary undergraduate cognitive psychology or neuropsychology text, or as a stimulus for graduate research projects. It does not explore in any depth the various theories it describes, nor does it take a particularly critical approach to the literature. The interested reader could, however, use the book as a guide to the research articles or imagery questionnaires they would find most pertinent to the aspect of imagery in which they were interested.