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In three studies, no evidence of nonconscious perception was found, although general procedures used in previous studies reporting the effect were followed. Presence/absence thresholds (Exps. 1 and 2) or recognition threshold (Exp. 3) were established for each subject. There was no difference in the effects of related and unrelated primes on voice reaction time during a word naming task. These findings raise questions about the robustness of nonconscious priming effects.

Past studies of bizarre imagery in which image-formation time is reported have not directly investigated the potential relation of that measure to recall. In the present study, 50 subjects spontaneously formed images from pairs of words to test the idea that quickly formed images are recalled more often. There was no relationship between image-formation time and recall. Image bizarreness and image interaction did not facilitate recall, and there were no differences in the times required to form bizarre and plausible images. The latter findings, which are inconsistent with much of the past research, may be the result of allowing subjects to form images spontaneously, rather than specifying the image to be formed.

Two methods were used to measure the Mueller-Lyer illusion. In the comparison procedure, subjects showed the difference between the lengths of the shafts; in the independent-judgment procedure they showed the length of each shaft individually. With both methods, one part of the figure was placed above the other and wings were removed from one part, either between or outside the two shafts. Removing the wings in the intershaft space reduced the illusion more than removing the wings outside the two parts of the figure with the comparison procedure but not with the independent-judgment procedure. The wings in the intershaft space contribute to the illusion, but only when the figure is considered as a whole.