Chapter 10

Question 1

What is the imageless thought debate?

Answer 1

Debate whether thinking can occur without images or that it requires images

Question 2

What is paired-associate learning?

Answer 2

Subjects presented with pairs of words that they must associate with one another (boat-hat so when presented with “boat” they must say “hat”)

Question 3

What is the conceptual peg hypothesis?

Answer 3

Concrete nouns create images that other words can “hang onto” - concepts hanging off of pegs from core subject

Question 4

What is mental chronometry?

Answer 4

The amount of time needed to carry out various cognitive tasks

Question 5

What is a propositional representation? Whose side of the imagery debate does this support?

Answer 5

Relationships between things can be represented by abstract symbols, like an equation or a sentence. (Pylyshyn)

Question 6

What is a depictive representation? Whose side of the imagery debate does this support?

Answer 6

Representations that are like realistic pictures of an object so that parts of the representation correspond to parts of the object. (Kosslyn)

Question 7

What is the tacit knowledge explanation?

Answer 7

People know that it takes a certain amount of time to travel from one place to another so they simulate this in their minds

Question 8

How was the tacit knowledge explanation countered?

Answer 8

By Finke/Pinker - they presented 4-dot display briefly and then showed an arrow. Participants say whether the arrow is pointing to a dot or not - they took longer to respond for greater distances between the arrow and dot. Bc subjects wouldn’t have had time to memorize distances btwn arrow and dot before making judgments, it is unlikely they used tacit knowledge

Question 9

How did Kosslyn test the effect of size in the visual field?

Answer 9

He asked participants to visualize an elephant and a bunny next to each other then a bunny and a fly next to each other. When asked questions about details of the bunny, participants were faster in the second round with the fly than in the first round with the elephant. This is because the bunny filled more of the visual field when it was with a fly

Question 10

What is a mental walk task?

Answer 10

Participants asked to mentally walk toward mental image of object and estimate how far away they are when the object overflows the visual field, and it is the same as if they were walking towards real animals

Question 11

Where are “imagery neurons” located?

Answer 11

Medial temporal lobe with hippocampus and amygdala

Question 12

How were imagery neurons discovered?

Answer 12

Neurons that responded in the same way when subject imagined object and when they were shown a picture of object

Question 13

What area of the brain is activated in both perception and imagery?

Answer 13

Both activate the visual cortex

Question 14

What happens when people make mental images of different sizes? What is a conclusion that can be drawn from this?

Answer 14

Same as what happens when seeing objects of different sizes - smaller objects make activity centered near the back of the brain but as size of mental image increases, activation moves towards the front of the visual cortex like for perception. Both imagery result in topographically organized brain activation

Question 15

What areas are deactivated during mental imagery? What is a possible reason for this?

Answer 15

Areas associated with nonvisual stimuli (hearing and touch) are deactivated - this may be because visual images are more fragile than real perception and deactivation helps quiet down irrelevant activity that might interfere with image

Question 16

How was a causal link between overlaps in visual cortex activation in perception and imagery established?

Answer 16

Using TMS applied to the visual area of the brain - stimulation caused subjects to respond more slowly and the slowing occurred for both perception and imagery

Question 17

What happens when a part of the visual cortex is removed?

Answer 17

It decreases mental field range

Question 18

What is unilateral neglect?

Answer 18

Damage to the parietal lobes that causes patient to ignore objects in one half of the visual field

Question 19

There are double dissociations of imagery and perception but there are also overlaps. What can explain this paradox?

Answer 19

The mechanisms of perception and imagery overlap only partially - mech for perception is located at both lower and higher visual centers and mech for imagery located mainly in higher visual centers. Visual perception is bottom-up processing that may eventually involve top-down, while imagery originates as top-down

Question 20

What is the method of loci?

Answer 20

A method in which things to be remembered are placed at different locations in a mental image of a spatial layout

Question 21

What is the pegword technique?

Answer 21

Associating items with concrete words