Abstract

Imagery is the experience of sensory information without external stimulation. It is known to play a significant role in the development and maintenance of mental disorders. It also induces greater emotional change compared to verbal interventions in the treatment of disorders. Although recent studies have investigated the effectiveness of imagery intervention, viewing the major symptoms of depression as a lack of positive imagery abilities, there is no official tool yet in Korea to measure positive and negative imagery abilities. Thus, this study adapted and analyzed the Prospective Imagery Task (PIT) to measure these abilities and constructed a Korean version (K-PIT). This version is composed of 20 questions and has a better goodness-of-fit than the PIT. Similar to the PIT, however, the K-PIT contains two independent factors (i.e., positive and negative imagery abilities). A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with 347 university students. The results showed an adequate level of internal confidence and good discriminant validity. Moreover, the relationship between positive and negative imagery abilities and depression was identified. The results depicted depression as being negatively and positively correlated with positive and negative imagery abilities, respectively. The K-PIT validated in this study can be used in future studies to measure the effectiveness of mechanisms related to imagery for various psychopathologies, including depression and imagery intervention. Finally, the implications and limitations of this study and suggestions for further studies are discussed.