Anderson Ch.4 Mental Imagery Flashcards
Mental Imagery
The processing of perceptual-like information in the absence of an external source for the perceptual information.
Roland and Friberg 1985
I.d. Brain structures that are active during verbal imagery and visual imagery.
Verbal jingle- activation in the prefrontal cortex near brocca’s area and in the parietal - temporal region of the posterior cortex near Wernicke’s area.
Visual task- Activation in the parietal, temporal, occipital cortex.
Santa 1977
Flashed an Array and then gave subjects test arrays to select which array had the same shapes as the test array.
Geometric condition - subjects make a faster positive identification when the configuration was identical vs linear, because visual information from the exposure was preserved.
Verbal condition- made a positive identification more quickly when test array was in a linear configuration.
Mental Rotation
Rotating objects mentally to change the perspective.
Shepard and Metzler 1971
had participants examine sets of 2-d representations and determine if the shapes were identical except for orientation. The greater the angle disparity the longer in took participants to verify a match. This seems to indicate that the participants are mentally rotting the objects.
Image Scanning
Scanning mental images for information
I.e. When asked how many windows are in your house, you mentally scan the rooms in your house while you count the number of Windows.
Brooks 1968
Had participants scan imagined diagrams and sentences and had subjects report their scanning in various ways. The response time was much slower when having to report their results in a mode that required scanning a visual array of Y’s and N’s.
Moyer 1973
Interested in the speed with which participants could judge the relative size of two animals from memory. Judgment times decreased as the difference in the of the estimated size increased.
Chambers and Reisberg 1985
Reported a difference between a mental image and visual perception the real object. They used reversible figures containing two interpretations. Subjects who could physically view the image were more likely to discover both interpretations, while those that were forced to make a mental image (after a brief exposure) were typically only able to discover one.
Fusiform face area (FFA)
Brain area that responds preferentially to faces. Located in the temporal cortex.
Parahippocamal place area (PPA)
Brain region that responds preferentially to pictures of locations.
O’craven and Kanwisher
Asked participants to either view faces and scenes or to imagine faces and scenes. The same brain areas were active when participants were seeing as when they were imagining.
Spatial imagery
Spatial representations that integrates information that comes from any sensory modality. Allows us to encode where a object is in space. The parietal regions support the spatial components of visual imagery.
Visual Experience
Certain aspects are unique to vision, such as color, and is separate from spatial information. Temporal lobe supports the visual aspects.
Cognitive Maps
Our imaginal representation of the world.
Route Maps
A path contains detailed information such as directions or specific places, but contains no spatial information.
Survey Map
A route that is basically a spatial image of the environment.
Hartley, Maguire, Spiers, and Burgess 2003
Used fMRI to look at the difference in brain activity between route maps and survey map representations. They had participants navigate in VR towns in either a route-following condition or a way-finding condition. In the way-finding task - subjects showed greater activation in the parietal cortex and in the hippocampus. In the route following task -participants showed greater activation in more anterior regions and motor regions.
Egocentric Representation
Space as we perceive it. The Parietal Cortes seems to be important in main thing these representations.
Epiphenomenon
A mental experience that does not have any functional role in information processing.
Allocentric representation
A physical map. Not from a particular viewpoint. People have difficulty navigating these maps if they don’t align with their actual view point. The hippocampus appears to be important in supporting allocentric representations.
Gunzelmann and Anderson
Looked at the time required to find an object on a standard map as a function of the viewers location. When the viewer is located to the south looking north, it is easier to find the object that when the viewer is north looking south, the opposite if the map orientation.
Physical Maps and Cognitive Maps
Physical maps show the effect of orientation, and cognitive maps do not. You can easily imagine yourself in a direction in your and point your finger in the direction of the door, but it much more difficult to point in the direction of an object while looking a map that is not oriented in the same direction as you.
Map Distortions
Arrises from the hierarchical structure of mental maps. I.e. Nevada is East of California, causing people to mistakenly think that Reno is east of San Diego.
