Chapter 10 - Visual Imagery

Question 1

visual imagery

Answer 1

seeing in the absence of visual stimulus

Question 2

mental imagery

Answer 2

refers to the ability ti recreate the sensory world in the absence of physical stimuli , is used to include all of these senses

Question 3

How is visual imagery useful?

Answer 3

Provides a way of thinking that adds another

dimension to purely verbal techniques usually associated with thinking

Question 4

imageless thought debate

Answer 4

• Thought is impossible without images (Aristotle)
• Thought is possible without images
• People who have great difficulty forming visual images
were still quite capable of thinking (Galton, 1983)

Question 5

paired-associate learning

Answer 5

participants are presented with pairs of words during a study period. asked to recall the word paired with the other

pairs of concrete nouns (easy to visualize) than pairs of abstract nouns

Question 6

conceptual peg hypothesis

Answer 6

concrete nouns create images that other words can “hang onto”

Question 7

How did John Watson describe imagery

Answer 7

“unproven” and “mythological”, and

therefore not worthy of study.

Question 8

Paivio (1963, 1965)

Answer 8

• Memory for pairs of concrete nouns that evoke
mental images is better than those which do not
evoke mental image
• Hotel-student better than Knowledge-honor
• Conceptual-peg hypothesis
• Concrete nouns create images that other words can “hang
onto”

Question 9

Shepard and Meltzer (1971)

Answer 9

Mental chronometry
• Participants mentally rotated one object to see if it
matched another object

Question 10

mental chronometry

Answer 10

determining the amount of time needed to carry out a cognitive task

Question 11

Coglab: Mental Rotation

Answer 11

Data from rotation experiments has been taken to
support that images are rotated in the mind through
a “functional space” - distance is represented in the
image
The greater the degree of rotation required, the
more time needed to complete the rotation

Question 12

Spatial correspondence between imagery and

perception

Answer 12

• Mental scanning
  • Participants create mental images and then scan
  them in their minds

Question 13

Kosslyn (1973)

Answer 13

-Memorize picture, create an image of it
• In image, move from one part of the picture to
another
• It took longer for participants to mentally move long
distances than shorter distances
• Like perception, imagery is spatial

Question 14

Lea (1975)

Answer 14

• More distractions when scanning longer distances
may have increased reaction time
• Interesting things encountered during the mental
scan are responsible for these distractions

Question 15

mental scanning

Answer 15

create mental images and then scan them in their minds

Question 16

imagery debate

Answer 16

about whether imagery is based on spatial mechanisms, such as those involved in perception or on mechanisms related to language, called propositional mechanisms

Question 17

Kosslyn et al. (1978)

Answer 17

Island with 7 locations, 21 trips
• It took longer to scan between greater distances
• Visual imagery is spatial

Question 18

Pylyshyn (1973)

Answer 18

Spatial representation is an epiphenomenon
• Accompanies real mechanism but is not actually a
part of it
Proposed that imagery is propositional
• Can be represented by abstract symbols

Question 19

Pylyshyn (1973)

Answer 19

Imagery debate
• Proposition representation: symbols, language
• Depictive representation: similar to realistic pictures

Question 20

• Proposition representation:

Answer 20

symbols, language
-representations in which relationships can be represented by abstract symbols, such as an equation, or a statement, such as the cat is under the table

Question 21

• Depictive representation:

Answer 21

similar to realistic pictures

Question 22

spatial representations

Answer 22

representations in which different parts of an image can be described as corresponding to specific locations in space

Question 23

Mental walk task

Answer 23

they were to imagine that they were walking toward their mental image of an animal

Question 24

Pylyshyn (2003)

Answer 24

• Kosslyn’s results can be explained by using real
  word knowledge unconsciously
  • Tacit-knowledge explanation
  • People know that in real world it takes longer to travel
  longer distances, so they simulate this result in Kosslyn’s
  experiment.

Question 25

Finke and Pinker (1982)

Answer 25

• Participants judge whether arrow points to dots previously seen • Longer reaction time when greater distance between arrow and dot (as if they were mentally “travelling”) • Not instructed to use visual imagery • No time to memorize, no tacit knowledge

Question 26

Size in your visual field result

Answer 26

result provides further proof that images are spatial, just like perception

Question 27

Interactions of imagery and perception

Answer 27

-they can both affect one another

Question 28

Finke and Pinker (1982)

Answer 28

Participants did not have time to memorize the | distance so they did not have tacit knowledge

Question 29

Comparing Imagery and Perception

Answer 29

Relationship between viewing distance and ability to perceive details • Imagine small object next to large object • Quicker to detect details on the larger object

Question 30

Mental-walk task

Answer 30

- Move closer for small animals than for large animals in order that the animal fills the visual field • move toward until the elephant (or the mouse) fills the visual field. Tell the distance to the animals. • distance to mouse is shorter. • Images are spatial, like perception

Question 31

Perky (1910)

Answer 31

• Mistake actual picture for a mental image • Perky projected a dim image of a banana onto the screen. • When participants were asked to reported their image of banana, their description matched the images that Perky was projecting (for example, the orientation of the banana). -Mistake actual picture for a mental image

Question 32

Imagery neurons respond to both

Answer 32

perceiving and imagining an object • Overlap in brain activation • Visual cortex

Question 33

Imagery neurons

Answer 33

respond to some images, but not to others. rate of firing

Question 34

Why was the discovery imagery neurons important

Answer 34

demonstrates possible physiological mechanism for imagery and because these neurons respond in the same way to perceiving an object and to imagining it, thereby supporting a close relation between perception and imagery

Question 35

Le Bihan et al. (1993)

Answer 35

Overlap in brain activation | • Visual cortex

Question 36

Ganis and coworkers (2004)

Answer 36

• Complete overlap of activation by perception and imagery in front of the brain • Differences near back of the brain

Question 37

Amedi and coworkers (2005)

Answer 37

- Again, overlap • Deactivation of non-visual areas of brain • Hearing • Touch • Mental images more fragile, less activation keeps other things from interfering

Question 38

Multi-voxel pattern analysis

Answer 38

-to train a classifier to associate a pattern of voxel activation with particular stimuli results showed a 55% accuracy when participants imagined the scene

Question 39

Brain activity in response to imagery

Answer 39

• may indicate something is happening • may not cause imagery so still we do not know whether imagery is spatial or propositional.

Question 40

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and perception/imagery

Answer 40

• Decreases brain functioning in a particular area of the brain for a short time • If behavior is disrupted, the deactivated part of the brain is causing that behavior based on the findings, concluded that brain activity in the visual cortex plays a casual role in both perception and imagery

Question 41

Kosslyn and coworkers (1999)

Answer 41

• TMS to visual area of brain during perception and imagery task • Response time slower for both • Brain activity in visual area of brain plays a causal role for both perception and imagery

Question 42

Neuropsychological Case Studies

Answer 42

Removing part of visual cortex reduced the size of field of view and accordingly decreased the (walking) distance to the imagery in the mental-walk task (but longer distance to the imagery) (Farah et al., 1992). This result supports the idea that the visual cortex is important for imagery.

Question 43

Unilateral neglect

Answer 43

• Patient ignores objects in one half of visual field in perception and imagery, even to the extent of shaving just one side of his face or eating only half the food on one side of the plate

Question 44

Guariglia and coworkers (1993)

Answer 44

• Brain damage left patient’s perceptions intact but mental images were not (lesion to the right frontal lobe) • No neglect in perception but neglect in mental images

Question 45

R.M. (Farah et al., 1988)

Answer 45

Damage to occipital and parietal lobes • Could draw accurate pictures of objects in front of him • Could not draw accurate pictures of objects from memory (using imagery) • Could not answer questions based on imagery. Grapefruit is larger than orange?

Question 46

C.K. (Behrmann et al., 1994)

Answer 46

• Inability to name pictures of objects, even his own drawings, in front of him • He could draw objects in great detail from memory (using imagery) given the names given verbally • Could compare sizes, could describe colours of objects

Question 47

Evidence for a double dissociation between | imagery and perception

Answer 47

• Indicates separate mechanisms | Also evidence for shared mechanisms

Question 48

Behrmann and coworkers (1994)

Answer 48

• Mechanisms partially overlap • Visual perception involves bottom-up processing; located at lower and higher visual centers • Imagery is a top-down process; located at higher visual centers • Explains C.K. and R.M. but not M.G.S.

Question 49

Conclusions from the imagery debate

Answer 49

``` Imagery and perception are closely related and share some (but not all) mechanisms (parallels and interactions). ```

Question 50

Differences in experience

Answer 50

* Perception is automatic and stable | * Imagery takes effort and is fragile

Question 51

Chalmers and Reisberg (1985)

Answer 51

• Had participants create mental images of ambiguous figures • Difficult to flip from one perception to another while holding a mental image of it

Question 52

Using Imagery to Improve Memory | Placing images at locations

Answer 52

Method of loci | • Visualizing items to be remembered in different locations in a mental image of a spatial layout

Question 53

Using Imagery to Improve Memory | Associating images with words

Answer 53

Pegword technique • Associate items to be remembered with concrete words • Pair each of these things with a pegword • Create a vivid image of things to be remembered with the object represented by the word

Question 54

Coglab: Link Word

Answer 54

The link word method (e.g., Atkinson & Raugh, 1975) is a way of associating or linking two words together. It is based on the finding that when people form an interactive image between two concepts, one item becomes an excellent cue for retrieving the second item. What do we predict participants will do? Why? People should recall quite a large number of meanings if they truly did spend about 10 seconds considering their interactive image. The reason is that the French word should serve as a good cue for the image, and the image serves as a link to the English meaning.

Question 55

Spatial imagery people better

Answer 55

in mental rotation

Question 56

Object imagery people better

Answer 56

in degraded picture | task

Question 57

spatial imagery refers to

Answer 57

the ability to image spatial relations, such as the layout of a garden

Question 58

object imagery refers to

Answer 58

the ability to image visual details, features, objects, such as a rose bush with bright roses in the garden