The role of imagery formation as a mnemonic device in drawing valid inferences from a prose passage was studied. The 72 undergraduate subjects were divided into two groups: one given instructions to form images for the objects discussed in the text, the other given instructions to repeat each sentence five times. Half the passages consisted of scrambled sequences of statements, half consisted of logically ordered sequences. Thus the effectiveness of imagery formation was compared to the effectiveness of rote learning. A test consisting of eight valid and eight invalid statements was given, and the subjects were asked to discern the valid and invalid statements. It was found (1) that the logical-sequence group performed better than the scrambled-sequence group and (2) that the imagery group's performance was better on both the logical sequence and the scrambled sequence. It was concluded that imagery formation can play an important role in developing reading comprehension. Tables and references are included. (AL)