The purpose of this study was twofold: to explore an imagery-based alternative to verbally based training transfer interventions and to examine whether individual differences in preferred processing style impact transfer. In sport and therapeutic settings, imagery-based rehearsal has been found to be very effective at changing behavior. Despite the widespread use of techniques related to future-oriented mental rehearsal in other fields, there has been very little exploration into the possibility of its use in workplace or classroom training. For this study, undergraduate students were presented with training on strategies to improve their scores on multiple-choice exams followed by a verbally based intervention, an imagery based intervention, or no intervention. Within the month following training, all of the students completed at least one multiple-choice exam in a psychology course. After the exam, the students reported whether they had used the strategies they learned in training and whether their exam grade had improved.The evidence showed that the training had a positive effect on transfer, but that the interventions were no more effective than the control. It was expected that the participants in both the verbal and imagery based intervention groups would use more of the trained skills and show more improvements in their exam scores than the participants in the control group. However, there were no differences between the participants in the three groups, indicating that the interventions were not effective at promoting transfer. Although the interventions were not effective, the training was. The use of trained skills was positively related to improvements in exam scores. Although the original experimental hypotheses could not be addressed, the study contributed to the literature by providing evidence that processing style may be an important characteristic to consider for training design. Participants who naturally process information visually (rather than verbally) had more test anxiety and felt less efficacious about performing the trained skills. In addition, the study provided more evidence that trainees' motivation to transfer the trained material is a key predictor of whether they use the trained skills.
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