Imagery in the Waking and Drowsy States

Abstract

The claim has been made by certain writers that the most prominent varieties of imagery present in the waking are not the most prominent varieties in the drowsy state. Other writers have maintained that the particular kind of imagery predominating in the waking also predominates in the drowsy state. My purpose in the present experiment was to investigate this matter further by a new method and with a larger group of subjects than had hitherto been used, and to determine whether or not this transformation of type is a typical experience. That is to say, wished to determine to what extent the non-verbal (2,9)2 imagery present in the waking is different from that present in the drowsy state. was concerned primarily with the presence rather than with the function of imagery. At the beginning of The Experimental Psychology of the ThoughtProcesses, after proposing to turn out his mind for inspection, Titchener states that he lectures from three main cues under different circumstances: he says he reads off what he has to say from a memory manuscript, follows the lead of his voice, or trusts to the guidance of (I3, 8). He claims that he may look to all three kinds of prompting in the course of a single hour, but that some one method is followed exclusively at times: thus, when am tired, find that vision and audition are likely to lapse, and am left alone with kinaesthesis (13, 8 f.). Ordinarily, however, visual and auditory imagery are superior. H. L. Hollingworth and L. S. Hollingworth made a study of their own imagery in drowsy states during the two years prior to I9I . Hollingworth found that ordinarily vague and feeble become here dominant and vivid, even tending to replace customary imagery habits. He states further that along with this emphasis of unusual modes goes the subordination of dominant modes, so that in the drowsy state, as in dream life, images even of these unusual types seem to exceed by far in intensity the clearest images of the waking state (7, 104 f.). Another very interesting observation has been made by Colvin. I find not the least difficulty in recalling, mentally, rich colors, and have often experienced, just before falling asleep, visual hallucinations of a most pronounced character. have elaborate visual dreams and have been able to get a complementary image from a memory image. Yet seldom employ imagery in my thinking. In learning a word series seldom see it as printed