Chapter 10 - Visual Imagery Flashcards
visual imagery
seeing in the absence of visual stimulus
mental imagery
refers to the ability ti recreate the sensory world in the absence of physical stimuli , is used to include all of these senses
How is visual imagery useful?
Provides a way of thinking that adds another
dimension to purely verbal techniques usually associated with thinking
imageless thought debate
• 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)
paired-associate learning
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
conceptual peg hypothesis
concrete nouns create images that other words can “hang onto”
How did John Watson describe imagery
“unproven” and “mythological”, and
therefore not worthy of study.
Paivio (1963, 1965)
• 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”
Shepard and Meltzer (1971)
Mental chronometry
• Participants mentally rotated one object to see if it
matched another object
mental chronometry
determining the amount of time needed to carry out a cognitive task
Coglab: Mental Rotation
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
Spatial correspondence between imagery and
perception
- Mental scanning
• Participants create mental images and then scan
them in their minds
Kosslyn (1973)
-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
Lea (1975)
• More distractions when scanning longer distances
may have increased reaction time
• Interesting things encountered during the mental
scan are responsible for these distractions
mental scanning
create mental images and then scan them in their minds
imagery debate
about whether imagery is based on spatial mechanisms, such as those involved in perception or on mechanisms related to language, called propositional mechanisms
Kosslyn et al. (1978)
Island with 7 locations, 21 trips
• It took longer to scan between greater distances
• Visual imagery is spatial
Pylyshyn (1973)
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
Pylyshyn (1973)
Imagery debate
• Proposition representation: symbols, language
• Depictive representation: similar to realistic pictures
• Proposition representation:
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
• Depictive representation:
similar to realistic pictures
spatial representations
representations in which different parts of an image can be described as corresponding to specific locations in space
Mental walk task
they were to imagine that they were walking toward their mental image of an animal