ABSTRACT
This study reveals that imagery plays a key role in facilitating the production of action memory. However, memory processes are often accompanied by various types of interference. Whether imagery can effectively inhibit multiple forms of interference in the encoding and retrieval stages and thus facilitate the enactment effect is unclear. The present study is aimed at addressing this issue. In experiment 1, the inhibitory effect of imagery on irrelevant perceptual interference in the encoding stage was explored under visual, motor, and visual + motor interference conditions. The results revealed that the enactment effect decreased in both the visual and motor interference conditions but disappeared only in the visual + motor interference condition, which confirms that imagery encoding in action memory formation has a certain inhibitory effect on irrelevant perceptual interference. In experiment 2, the inhibitory effect of imagery encoding on the forgetting of action memory was explored using a directed forgetting paradigm. The results revealed that in contrast to the verbal encoding condition, the directed forgetting effect disappeared in the imagery encoding condition, suggesting that imagery encoding has an inhibitory effect on forgetting. These results confirm that imagery encoding has certain inhibitory effects on irrelevant perceptual interference and forgetting.