The current study was motivated by the facts that there is (a) theoretical uncertainty about which
factors and conditions determine whether motor activities influence adults’ mental imagery performance,
(b) rather sparse evidence (Black & Schwartz, 1996) on children’s performance on the water
tilting task, and (c) previous evidence (Frick et al., in press; Funk et al., 2005) that motor activity might
be even more important for younger children’s imagery performance. In four different versions of the
water tilting task, we addressed the questions of whether (a) visibly executed movement leads to better
imagery performance compared with (b) seeing but not executing, (c) executing but not seeing, or
(d) not perceiving any movement at all.