Metaphors are often used to intuitively communicate about movement. Here, expert pianists played two melodies while keeping eight different metaphors in mind, contrasting arousal level, valence direction, and metaphor type (action-related and emotion-related metaphors). Measures of keystroke timing and velocity were analyzed to assess the relative contribution of metaphor content and melodic note sequence to motor performance, alongside ratings of semantic similarity between metaphors. Using Bayesian multilevel models, results indicate that the arousal level of the metaphor has the most influence on keystroke force, average tempo, and tempo variability. Additionally, interactions with valence are seen for the timing measures, and for both valence and type in force. No effects of the melody sequence were found. Similarity ratings of metaphor pairs indicate that mental similarities largely mirror performance similarities. These findings show the potential effects of mental imagery on motor performance and have implications for teaching complex movements in practical settings.

Imagery is an important feature of mental simulation, which is central to human cognitive functions from decision making to joint action to language production. Imagery is often used as a mental rehearsal strategy in areas of expertise, such as music, athletics and surgery, but also in movement rehabilitation. Individual imagery abilities may vary by general, modalityunspecific imagery capacity, as well as by imagery types. Within the literature, multiple tests have been used to measure imagery ability in various modalities such as visual, auditory, motor and spatial imagery. Participants (n=301) completed common imagery questionnaires (MIQ3, VMIQ2, BQMI, VVIQ, MASMI, OSIVQ, BAIS, CAIS). Findings suggest that greater reported dance, video game or music experience is related to increased kinesthetic, spatial or auditory imagery ability respectively. Other individual differences were found across subscales of the same modality, suggesting issues with reliability between questionnaires. Further factor analyses may reveal commonalities between imagery types. 2998