Abstract

Four experiments explored whether size-congruency effects - which are commonly observed when participants are required to recognize previously seen whole patterns - emerge when they have to recognize a part that is the by-product of mental imagery operations. Results showed that: 1) performance in the part recognition task was affected by the size-congruency of the stimuli at study and test independently of the presence of an interpolated imagery task; 2) size-congruency effects are observed under both short-term and long-term memory conditions; however, 3) under STM conditions, the effects vary as a function of stimuli distance: They are observed when the stimuli are presented at study at a distance of 60 cm, but not when the stimuli are presented at study at a distance of 120 cm.