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The imagination effect occurs when learners who imagine a procedure perform better on a subsequent test than learners who study it. The present study explored whether this effect is restricted to short-term learning or whether it also applies when learning is tested after a delay. Forty novices and forty experts learned about a basketball game system and were instructed to either listen and memorize (no-imagination condition) or imagine and memorize (imagination condition) the tactical instructions given orally. The results indicated that experts who imagined the material performed better in both immediate and delayed knowledge tests than experts who simply studied the same material, indicating a robust effect of the imagination in experts. However, the results showed that novices performed well in the immediate knowledge test under the no-imagination condition, but this effect was reversed in the delayed knowledge test, making imagination more beneficial. These findings indicate that the effectiveness of imagination over time depends on the level of expertise of the players.

Imagination-to-learn is a specific learning strategy that has been studied in many academic fields. The present study investigated whether imagination is beneficial overall for learning compared to conventional study strategies, while also identifying moderator factors affecting the global effect. A meta-analysis was conducted by scientifically rigorous experiments comparing the learning outcomes of students who were asked to form a mental image of the events described in learning material while reading (imagination condition) or were given no imagination instructions (control condition). A total of 21 experimental studies published on the PsycINFO, Web of Science, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, ERIC and Google Scholar databases were included, yielding 70 pair-wise comparisons with N = 2625 participants. An overall positive effect of imagination-to-learn was found for both retention (g[superscript +] = 0.40, 95% CI [0.23, 0.58], z = 4.63, p < 0.001) and transfer (g[superscript +] = 0.51, 95% CI [0.22, 0.43, z = 3.43, p < 0.001]) performance. However, analysis of the funnel plots showed that publication bias was present in the reporting of learning outcomes. Analysis of the moderators indicated that the effect sizes differed significantly only with respect to learners' prior knowledge for transfer performance and their educational level for retention scores. Based on these findings, the present study provides important directions for future research and practices.