The question of re-interpreting images can be seen as a new focus for the imagery debate since the possibility would appear to be a direct prediction of the pictorial account Finke, Pinker and Farah (1989) have claimed that their results "refute" the earlier negative evidence of Chambers and Reisberg (1985), while Peterson, Kihlstrom, Rose & Glisky (1992) have used the ambiguous stimuli of Chambers and Reisberg to show that under certain conditions, these images may be reinterpreted after all. By employing newly devised tasks, our o w n experiments have provided further conflicting evidence concerning the conditions under which images can and cannot be reinterpreted. W e consider their bearing on the fundamental 'format* issue which neither Finke et al (1989) nor Peterson et al. (1992) address directly.

Since the "equivalence" of imagery and perception has been one of the cenU^al tenets of the pictorial theory, the negative results of Chambers and Reisberg (1985) on an image reinterpretation task may be seen as posing a fundamental challenge for the pictorial account. Finke, Pinker and Farah's (1989) claimed refutation of these negative results may be questioned on a number of methodological grounds. In addition to examining these issues, we report results of an experiment which tests what is seemingly another direct prediction of pictorial theories. Our investigation employs newly devised imagery tasks whose success depends on being able to "rotate", "inspect" and reinterpret images. Our negative results add further weight to a tacit knowledge account of images as intrinsically interpreted, abstract symbols.