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In the psychological study of auditory imagery, instruments for measuring vividness or clarity have existed for some time. The present article argues that existing scales are ambiguous, in that clarity and vividness of auditory imagery are addressed simultaneously, and that empirical validations of those scales suffer from inadequate methods. The aim of the present study was to develop a new psychometric scale, the Clarity of Auditory Imagery Scale, measuring individual differences in clarity of auditory imagery. Drawing on previous literature, 16 items were generated, forming an initial item pool that was presented to 212 respondents. The hypothesized single dimensionality inherent in the data was confirmed using Velicer's (1976) minimum average partial test and parallel analysis. Also, data were factor analyzed, extracting a stable one-factor solution including all 16 items. The internal consistency of the final scale was satisfactory (coefficient alpha = .88). Other properties of the questionnaire, such as test-retest reliability, remain to be established.
Mental imagery may be investigated using various methods (see, e.g., Bensafi et al., 2003; Halpern, Zatorre, Bouffard, & Johnson, 2004; Kosslyn, Reiser, Farah, & Fliegel, 1983; Marks, 1973). One of the main methods in the investigation of the phenomenological experience of mental imagery is self-report questionnaires, such as the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ; Marks, 1973) and the Vividness of Olfactory Imagery Questionnaire (VOIQ; Gilbert, Crouch, & Kemp, 1998). Typically, the subjective experience of mental images concerns vividness (i.e., a combination of clarity and liveliness) or clarity (i.e., a combination of brightness and sharpness; see Marks, 1999; McKelvie, 1995) of mental images, a topic early highlighted in studies by Galton (1880, 1907) and Betts (1909). In the Galton protocol (the "breakfast-table questionnaire"; Galton, 1907), participants were asked to visually consider "your breakfast-table as you sat down to it this morning" (p. 58; though the breakfast table served only as an example of something familiar) and to write down what they could see in their mind's eye with respect to three dimensions- illumination, definition, and coloring.
Galton's (1907) work also included auditory imagery (e.g., the beat of rain against the window panes, the slam of a door), which was assessed in a qualitative form similar to that used for visual imagery. We argue that over a century later,...