Mental imagery vividness and its impact on learning attainment in design education

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MacFie, Rebecca and Brisco, Ross; Barrie, Jeff and Morgan, Thea and Ross, Joel and Selwyn, Becky and McMahon, Chris and Buck, Lyndon and Brisco, Ross and Bohemia, Erik, eds. (2026) Mental imagery vividness and its impact on learning attainment in design education. In: Exploring Diversity in Engineering & Product Design Education. Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education . The Design Society, GBR, pp. 203-208. ISBN 9781912254248 (https://doi.org/10.35199/EPDE.2026.35)

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Abstract

Mental imagery, the experience of perceiving an image within one’s mind, has long been assumed to be an integral part of a designer’s cognition. Recent research, however, has determined that this is not the case for every designer, and the experience of mental imagery in design differs between individuals. Designers, including those within engineering design, can experience mental imagery in varying levels of vividness across all sense modalities, from visual to emotional, and little is known about how these cognitive differences impact on their design process, or on their educational success. This paper poses the hypothesis: Does higher mental imagery vividness lead to better performance in a design class? By recruiting students from two engineering design classes to complete a psychometric questionnaire measuring multisensory imagery vividness and comparing these responses to final class grades, correlations have been determined between success in a design class and multisensory mental imagery vividness. The findings of this study confirm that the hypothesis posed is incorrect, with any correlations found showing that the higher a student scores their imagery vividness, the worse their final class grade is. These results pose further questions about the need for consideration of cognitive differences in design education and how we can create more inclusive learning environments in engineering design.

ORCID iDs

MacFie, Rebecca and Brisco, Ross ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8216-9218; Barrie, Jeff, Morgan, Thea, Ross, Joel, Selwyn, Becky, McMahon, Chris, Buck, Lyndon, Brisco, Ross and Bohemia, Erik
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)