Chapter 10

Question 1

What did Galton find out about mental pictures. Is there a probllem with this research

Answer 1

• some people describe imagining vivid images while other people report little to no visualization at all - are some people visualizers while others are not?
• problem: self -report data may be showing differences in how people talk about mental images rather than the images themselves

Question 2

What makes certain features prominent in depictions vs. descriptions

Answer 2

depictions: size and position (head of cat)
Description: distinctive and strongly associated with subject (claws and whiskers)

Question 3

What did Kosslyn’s experiment demonstrate? (cat head vs claws)

Answer 3

group 1 asked to visualize a cat responds faster to head question than claw question
group 2 asked to ‘think’ about a cat and were faster to answer claw question
- this means people cna chose which mode of representation to use which changes the information most readily available

Question 4

What did the image-scanning test show about mental images

Answer 4

• Subjects memorize a map and the landmarks it posesses
• THey are then told to picture a black dot moving from one landmark to the next
• when the spek reaches the target the clock stops
  results: the furthur the distance on the map the longer participants took to move the black speck in their minds eye to the target

Question 5

What did the ‘zoom in’ experiment entail, and what did it show?

Answer 5

Participants asked to imagine a mouse either next to an elephant or a paperclip.

• then asked if he has whiskers
• slower response time for mouse next to elephant because they have to zoom in to find the answer
• this means that mental images preserve distance relationships and spatial relationships just like actual images

Question 6

What did the mental rotation task entail and what did it show?

Answer 6

participants had to decide if two pictures were the same but in order to do so the images had to be rotated

• reaction time depended on how far they had to rotate
• in addition regardless of whether pictures had to be spun on a 2D (picture plane) or a vertical axis (depth) they were almost equally as accurate (95%)
• proves that sometimes mental images are less like pictures and more like sculpture

Question 7

What is another explanation of why it takes longer to scan mental images that are far apart? which is correct?

Answer 7

1. perhaps participants are simply trying to do what the experimenter wants
2. Perhaps these types of questions do draw on knowledge about how the world works and there isn’t actually any mental travel
   - neither is true because the same results are replicated without instruction to visualize

Question 8

What did Segal and Fusella’s experiment with mind’s ear/eye entail and show?

Answer 8

participants had to detect either the presence of a faint vsual or auditory signal while either forming a visual or auditory image in their mind’s eye/ear.
Results: Participants were worse at detecting visual stim when visualizing and the same for auditory image. There were also more false alarms in both cases
Proves: There is some overlap and competition among resources for visualizing and percieving

Question 9

what did Farah discover about visualizing and perceiving (H and T)

Answer 9

• participants visualized either H or T then were presented with very low contrast H or T and had to identify it
• visualizing a T made it easier to percieve a T (same results for H)
• proves that visualizing primes perception and they therfore draw on similar mechanisms

Question 10

What brain areas are involved in both early stages of low-level features perception and visualization of highly detailed images?

Answer 10

Within the occipital cortex, areas V1 and V2

- activation increases when imagining larger objects

Question 11

Which brain areas activate both when watching movement and imagining movement

Answer 11

Area MT/MST

Question 12

What evidence from TMS demonstrates the relation between processing and visualizing?

Answer 12

When TMS disrupts area V1 there are problems in both vision and visual imagery

Question 13

how can brain damage prove relation between perception and visualizing

Answer 13

Patients who lose the ability to see in color can’t imagine things in color either
- same for those who lose fine detail

Question 14

What evidence comes from neglect syndrome

Answer 14

patient who neglects the left side of his world also neglects it while imagining
- when asked to visualize a familiar street only names the buildings on the right (same effect when perspective changes)

Question 15

The data shows a functional equivalence between visual imagery and visual perception. what is functional equivalence?

Answer 15

a series of close parallels in how two systems work

Question 16

How was visual acuity tested in both perception and visualization?

Answer 16

Using “two point acuity”
- in perception the furthur two dots are from the centre of your line of vision the harder it is to tell they are seperate
- When asked to imagine these dots and move their eyes away from them the same pattern of acuity falloff was observed
= qualitatively and quantitatively the data matches

Question 17

What happens when we preform these same tests on blind individuals?

Answer 17

They are presented with a sculpture to explore and then must imagine scanning it from one point to another

• the results are the same (more distance = longer scanning time)
• However they can’t be using a sense of how things look, therefor they must be thinking in terms of spatial layout/motion imagery

Question 18

how is spatial imagery distinct from visual imagery? Which do sighted people use?

Answer 18

• represents arrangements of shapes in terms of movements and body feelings
• sighted people can use either

Question 19

What neurological evidence is there for a distinction between visual and spatial imagery

Answer 19

• fMRI data shows different brain areas activate for visual tasks and spatial tasks
• patients who lose ability to perceive motion also lose ability to imagine it

Question 20

What are the exceptions in brain damage? (shows perception and visualization might be separate…?_

Answer 20

• patient with bilateral occipital lesions becomes blind but can still perform visual imagery tasks
• some visual agnosia patients also do well on visual imagery tasks
• patients with neglect syndrome in vision but not in imagery

Question 21

How can we explain these exceptions?

Answer 21

• people with damage to visual areas can still use spatial imagery to perform imagery tasks because this skill relies on different brain areas
• damage to motion brain areas also won’t affect vision

Question 22

How does patient L.H demonstrate the importance of distinguishing b/w visual and spatial imagery?

Answer 22

Despite being unable to perform task requiring judgements on visual appearance (ie. color) he still performs well in imagery tasks with image scanning or mental rotation

Question 23

Therefor what are the two types of imagery?

Answer 23

visual - visualize, and spatial - spatialize. Most people have the capacity for both

Question 24

How do people decide what type of imagery to use?

Answer 24

• depending on the task (color task = visual, speck task - could be either watching it move or feeling your fingers move it)
• depending on ability levels (some people are better visualizers, others are better spatializers)

Question 25

10% of pop. says they can’t visualize. How was this claim tested?

Answer 25

• no difference found in tasks where spatial imagery was an option
• However in tasks where visual imagery is required (two-point acuity) only vivid imagers reproduced the perception data while on imagers did not
  = a genuine difference in quality of imagery experience

Question 26

How can individual abilities in imagery affect career choice?

Answer 26

visualizers = more successful in the arts
spatializers = scientists and engineers

Question 27

What is eidetic imagery?

Answer 27

• photographic like memories, in which incredible detail can be drawn after only brief presentations
• people who can do this are eidetikers
• common in autistic individuals

Question 28

Give examples of eidetikers

Answer 28

• women who could recall poetry in foreign language years later
• 10yr old boy could memorize details of a picture after only 30 sec

Question 29

who coined term the minds eye

Answer 29

shakespear

Question 30

What are our percepts?

Answer 30

mental representation of a stimulus we are perceiving

• percepts are organized depictions.
• unambiguous form of a potentially ambiguous stimuli
  ie. necker cube - is a neutral stimuli that can be interpreted in either way, but we choose only one to perceive
• are depictions

Question 31

Are visual images in the mind’s eye neutral like pictures? (in that they can be reinterpreted in multiple ways) or are they already interpreted a certain way like percepts? how was this question answered?

Answer 31

• By showing subjects an ambiguous figure and then asking them imagine it and reinterpret the image in their mind’s eye
• There was 100% failure in this task
• to rule out forgetting, moments later they had to draw what they remembered and try to reinterpret that
• in this case they had 100% success rate
  = images are entirely unambiguous and resistant to reinterpretation

Question 32

How are visual images stored in long term memory? what are image files?

Answer 32

according to kosslyn, you first activate nodes specifying “image frame” = global shape and then elaborations can be added.
Image files: visual info specifying an objectsappearance that can be used as a reciepe or set of instructions - in the form of sentences = not picture like at all

Question 33

What evidence supports The Conceptual‐Propositional hypothesis of images in long term memory? (3 observations)

Answer 33

1. images containing more parts take longer to create
2. images containing more detail take longer
3. people have control over how much detail (makes sense if you start with a global shape)

Question 34

Visual memory is largely influenced by verbal labels. what experiment demonstrated this point

Answer 34

participants shown an ambiguous image with a label (ie. could be either sunglasses or a barbell) when asked to later reproduce the drawing subjects distorted the image to fit the description, meaning they remembered the label and not the actual picture of the drawing

Question 35

What did the study about spatial reasoning (using maps) reveal?

Answer 35

• participants asked if seattle is more north than montreal, incorrectly say no
• they are therefor reasoning using prepositions (canada is more north than US, so Montreal is more north than seatlle) rather than creating a visual image of a map

Question 36

Explain how imager helps memory in the imagery rating experiment

Answer 36

• one group of subjects rates a list of nouns on how readily they evoke an image
• a second group of subjects memorizes these nouns
• High-imagery words were more readily remembered

Question 37

explain how imagery mnemonics were proven to improve memory

Answer 37

when given pairs of nouns to memorize
group 1 - told to rehearse silently (poorest performance)
Group 2 - form a sentence (intermediate)
Group 3 - form image of two things interacting (best performance by far)

Question 38

We know that images interacting improves memory but does bizarreness of the images?

Answer 38

• Yes, the effect of bizarreness has no impact if shown multiple bizarre images in a row
• however when intermixed with normal images, bizarreness does improve memory

Question 39

what is dual coding?

Answer 39

imaginable materials are doubly represented in memory ( symbolically via verbal word and visually via corresponding picture)
= better chance of recall
- certain cues activate certain types of memory
- some types of info are better stored as one type than the other (size = visual, semantic associations = verbal)

Question 40

It has been proven that there is in fact only one memory system containing both symbolic and visual memories. How has this been shown?

Answer 40

• recall for both is dependent on connections
• priming effects and encoding specificity can be shown in both domains
• visual memory is influenced by schema based, generic knowledge

Question 41

what experiment showed visual memory is influenced by schema based, generic knowledge

Answer 41

After being shown a picture of a kitchen with some unexpected objects (ie. fireplace) and then shown a new image that either altered the common objects or the unexpected objects, participants only noticed if the unexpected object was changed

Question 42

What is boundary extension?

Answer 42

A tendency for people to remember pictures as being less “zoomed in” (and thus having wider boundaries) than they actually were.

• happens because people see the photo by means of a perceptual schema which places picture in a larger context
• they have expectations about what would happen beyond the pictures edge, and these expectations become part of the remembered experience
• suggesting a shared memory system for visual and verbal memory as the same effect occurs in both

Question 43

In working memory are images and verbal representation in the same system

Answer 43

no? they are distinct?

Question 44

self-report data

Answer 44

A form of evidence in which the person is asked directly about his or her own thoughts or experiences.

Question 45

demand character

Answer 45

Cues within an experiment that signal to the participant how he or she is “supposed to” respond.

Question 46

why are Long division questions with space in between numbers performed faster

Answer 46

because they have more room for their mental image

Question 47

in the paired associate memory task what were the results?

Answer 47

→ Each participant learns 16 pirs that are either high-high (most imageable), Low-high, high-low or Low-Low
- a low imagery word would be like effort
- While a high imagery word would be dress
Results (best to worst) high-high, high-low, Low- high or Low-Low
→ Evidence that there is a strong effect of concreteness in the effect in memory
→ Even though they aren’t asked to use imagery – it is spontaneous

Question 48

In Pinker and Finke’s arrow study what were the results?

Answer 48

→ Does the arrow point to a location where the dot was on the previous screen
→ Distance to the dot affects times to respond
→ More likely to represent location using imagery rather than a verbal description
→ The idea is that you either follow the arrow to see if it intersects with a dot in your mental image
→ If it was propositional you should be equally as fast regardless of distance
→ However if we process mental images the same way we process real images, distance will change rxn time (which it does)

Question 49

what is the Conceptual‐Propositional Hypothesi

Answer 49

• You don’t need to use “images”
• You create a description that you use to respond, rather than an actual picture
• information stored in the same way for both verbal and visual events
– concepts and propositions (that you can use to create a description of an image)
– concrete words have a richer set of predicates than more abstract words

Question 50

What happens to scanning times for stimuli that subjects can’t predict (spirals, mazes)

Answer 50

scanning times varied depending on the shape and scanning distance
Results: people are doing what they would actually do on paper because their predictions did not match performance

Question 51

what happened in kosslyn’s Investigating spatial characteristics of imagery experiment (boat image)

Answer 51

Participants who focus on one end of the image take longer to determine whether a feature exists at the other end.
- It’s as if you have to scan from where your focus is to the other end of the boat (distance MATTERS)

Question 52

What happened in kossyln’s study involving memorization of boxes

Answer 52

→ Each different sized square is associated with a color
→ Then follow instructions for creating mental images
→ I.e. Get pink square, make a tiger in the size of the square.
Does it have Stripes?
→Time required to determine appropriateness of a property of an animal as a function of the size of the image (size of the box)
smaller box = longer rxn time

Question 53

in kossyln’s study involving memorization of boxes
The false properties are actually faster to confirm for the ______ boxes compared to the true properties
- The false properties are slower to confirm in ______ box compared to true properties
what is the reasoning behind this?

Answer 53

smaller, larger

reasoning: When you are looking for evidence that something isn’t there you need more information. People are more inclined to say no with smaller images. There’s more details to go through in order to disconfirm the presence of a property

Question 54

whats the The difference between physically close and functionally close

Answer 54

representations of the image in your brain don’t have to be right next to each other. In terms of physical layout, we don’t know if they are really picture‐like or not.
→Functionally, the representation is close to picture‐like, in that it maintains information about size, distance, geometry, etc.

Question 55

when rotating subjects had to rotate Rs back to their original orientation. Which took the longest

Answer 55

Because people rotate the shortest distance, the longest time was for an upside down R (180 degrees)

Question 56

how did Reisberg & Chambers investigate frame of reference? ( texas)

Answer 56

• used complex shapes (such as the form of texas) but rotated in a different orientation
• If they are reminded to rotate it and that another part of an image may be the top they are much better at recognizing the shape

Question 57

Are spatial and visual imagery the same?

Answer 57

No you can lose your ability to visualize and still be able to perform spatial imagery tasks

Question 58

What did the pulley experiment reveal about the difference between visual and spatial imagery?

Answer 58

Either static questions (is the pulley attached to the ceiling) or kinematic questions (which direction will the middle pulley turn) are asked
- kinematic questions occur in step by step fashion thus rxn times are slower for middle pulley, no difference in rxn time for static questions

Question 59

How does patient L.H> show the dissociation b/w visual and spatical imagery?

Answer 59

• Damage bilaterally to temporal occipital regions; and damage unilaterally to right temporal and inferior frontal lobes
• he can create a replica drawing but can’t recognize what the object is

A: Tasks imagining an object Visual imagery
→neurological dissociation between visual imagery and spatial imagery
- worse than the control subjects
B: Mental spatial tasks Spatial imagery
- He’s as good or better than controls

Question 60

can mental practice be beneficial?

Answer 60

Landers (2007))
– Compare:

• Actual physical practice
• Mental practice for the same about of time
• Control (no practice)
Results (over a lot of different studies)
→Mental practice can be beneficial:
Physical&raquo_space; Mental > Control

Question 61

what is synesthesia?

Answer 61

Stimulus appropriate for one sense triggers and experience appropriate to another sense.
– Chromesthesia (colours) most common 
– Letters or digits have colour
– Sounds have colour

– Sounds have taste
– 1 / 200 people 
– Improves memory?

Question 62

what happens when synthesiacs are tested on memory of digits (either in black, colors that match, or colors that contrast what they see)

Answer 62

• Performance in the memory task is best in the black condition
• Worst in the incongruent condition
• In congruent condition much better but still not as good as the black letters conditions

Question 63

The fact that languages with more color terms remember colors better may be a function of ______ and not linguistic relativity

Answer 63

dual coding

Question 64

mental-image reinterpretations would be the EASIEST when…

Answer 64

The sought-after discovery is compatible with both the image’s depiction and its reference frame.