In the present research, the mental imagery manipulation plays a crucial role. We wanted to confirm the mental imagery directions that we employed would yield the expected effect on mental imagery ratings by L2 English participants. Thus, two within-participant pilot studies were conducted to compare the influence of mental imagery directions on mental imagery ratings within nineteen L1 English participants (Pilot Study 1) and twenty L2 English-L1 Japanese (Pilot Study 2) participants by using two short English stories. For the L2 condition, five participants were removed from the study due to skipping the instructions section of the study.