Modality-Specific Mental Imagery Abilities are Unrelated to Modality-Specific Category Learning

Category learning is an important ability that underlies complex cognitive processes such as object recognition and speech perception. Categories are ubiquitous across modalities and people differ greatly in their ability to learn novel categories. Here, we addressed a modality-specific cognitive individual difference that may relate to category learning – mental imagery. We examined how individual differences in self-reported auditory and visual mental imagery abilities related to individual differences in auditory and visual category learning. Overall, according to Bayesian analyses, there was anecdotal to moderate evidence for the null hypothesis that differences in self-reported modality-specific mental imagery are unrelated to differences in modality-specific category learning. These results have implications for theories of category learning and raise questions regarding the functions of mental imagery in cognitive processes such as categorization and learning.