Introducing TAMI: An Objective Test of Ability in Movement Imagery

ABSTRACT

Individual ability in mental imagery varies widely across individuals, leading to the development of questionnaires to evaluate mental imagery. Within the domain of movement imagery, questionnaires have previously relied on subjective ratings of vividness, which may be influenced by additional factors such as motor skill confidence, success of imagined actions, and social desirability. These additional factors are of particular importance when making comparisons between samples from different populations, such as athletes versus nonathletes and patients versus healthy individuals. The authors present a novel test of ability in movement imagery (Test of Ability in Movement Imagery [TAMI]) that relies on objective measures and requires participants to make explicit imagined movements from an external perspective. In Study 1, the authors present evidence that young adults perform at a mid-level on the TAMI. In Study 2, they further compare performance on the TAMI with a battery of other measures to better characterize the TAMI by determining its similarities and differences with existing measures. The findings of both studies indicate the TAMI to be a valid and reliable measure of movement imagery ability. The authors additionally discuss future applications of the TAMI to athletic and clinical research.

Keywords:

• imagery ability
• mental imagery
• motor imagery
• movement imagery

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge Yvonne Chen for insightful discussions when developing TAMI. They would also like to thank Dr. Michael Peters for providing them with the redrawn Mental Rotations Test (MRT-A) from Peters et al. (1995), used in Study 2. This research was partly funded by a Discovery grant and a Canada Graduate Scholarship, both from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, held by Anthony Singhal and Christopher R. Madan, respectively.

Notes

1. Isaac et al. (1986) found the correlation between the VVIQ and VMIQ to be between .45 and .81 in different samples. Eton et al. (1998) found correlations between VMIQ score and self-reported use of mental imagery in sports performance to be significantly correlated (r = .60). Roberts et al. (2008) calculated correlations between the VMIQ2 and the MIQ-R to range between .34 and .74 (sign-adjusted) for the various subscales.