Chapter 10: Visual imagery

Question 1

Visual imagery

Answer 1

seeing in the absence of a visual stimulus

Question 2

Mental imagery

Answer 2

the ability to recreate the sensory world in the absence of physical stimuli

Question 3

Imageless thought debate

Answer 3

whether thought is impossible or possible without an image

Question 4

3 basic elements of consciousness (Wundt)

Answer 4

images, sensations, and emotions

Question 5

Conceptual peg hypothesis (Paivio)

Answer 5

concrete nouns create images that other words or stimuli can hang onto (e.g. boat-hat)

Question 6

Mental chronometry

Answer 6

measuring the amount of time needed to carry out various cognitive tasks

Question 7

Mental scanning

Answer 7

participants create mental images then scan them in their minds

Question 8

Findings from Kosslyn’s mental scanning experiments

Answer 8

it took longer for participants to scan between greater distances in the mental images they created, indicating that imagery is spatial like perception

Question 9

Imagery debate

Answer 9

whether imagery is based on spatial mechanisms or mechanisms related to language called propositional mechanisms

Question 10

Spatial representations

Answer 10

different parts of an image correspond to specific locations in space

Question 11

Epiphenomenon argument (Pylyshyn)

Answer 11

the spatial experience of mental images accompanies the real mechanism, but is not actually part of the mechanism

Question 12

Propositional representations

Answer 12

relationships are represented by abstract symbols like an equation or a statement (e.g. the cat is under the table); imagery operates in a similar way to semantic networks

Question 13

How is imagery affected by the size of an object in one’s visual field?

Answer 13

level of detail perceived increases as distance of an object decreases and it fills up more of the visual field

Question 14

Mental walk task (Kosslyn)

Answer 14

participants were asked to imagine that they were walking toward their mental image of an animal and estimate their distance from it when the image began to overflow their visual field

Question 15

Findings of mental walk task

Answer 15

participants had to move closer for small animals than for larger animals

Question 16

Findings on the interaction between imagery and perception

Answer 16

imagery can be implicitly biased by perception (Perky) and they can facilitate one another (Farah)

Question 17

Imagery neurons

Answer 17

neurons in the medial temporal lobe that respond to both perception and imagery of specific objects, but not to other objects

Question 18

Topographic map

Answer 18

specific locations on a visual stimulus cause activity at specific locations in the visual cortex

Question 19

Areas of the visual cortex activated by small and large objects

Answer 19

small objects activate the posterior or back of the visual cortex while larger objects activate the front or the anterior of the visual cortex

Question 20

Areas of the brain activated by perception and imagery

Answer 20

both activate the same areas in the frontal lobe but perception activates more of the visual cortex in the occipital lobe

Question 21

Findings on patient MGS

Answer 21

when part of her right occipital lobe was removed, the size of her visual field decreased, so it overflowed at a further distance (mental walk task) than prior to the removal

Question 22

Unilateral neglect

Answer 22

ignoring objects in half of the visual field for both perception and imagery due to damage in the parietal lobes

Question 23

Dissociation between imagery and perception

Answer 23

cases wherein perception is poor but imagery is intact, or vice versa

Question 24

Patient RM

Answer 24

was able to draw objects in front of him (perception) but was unable to draw objects from memory (imagery) due to damage in occipital and parietal lobes

Question 25

Patient CK

Answer 25

was able to draw objects from memory (imagery) but was unable to name objects in front of him and objects in his drawing later on

Question 26

Differences between perception and imagery

Answer 26

perception involves bottom-up processing, is stable, and is located at both lower and higher visual centers; imagery involves top-down processing, is fragile, located at higher visual centers, and can be difficult to manipulate

Question 27

Method of loci (Simonides)

Answer 27

things to be remembered are placed at different locations in a mental image of a spatial layout that is familiar

Question 28

Eidetic imagery

Answer 28

photographic memory; the ability to maintain a seemingly clear mental image of an earlier perceptual event; higher incidence in children than adults and has no reliable demonstration

Question 29

Pegword technique

Answer 29

forming associations between things to be remembered and concrete nouns that are easy to visualize

Question 30

Object imagery

Answer 30

the ability to imagine visual details, features, or objects

Question 31

Paper folding test

Answer 31

to measure spatial imagery, participants have to decide what a folded paper with a hole pierced on it looks like when it is unfolded

Question 32

Vividness of visual imagery questionnaire

Answer 32

to measure object imagery, participants rated the vividness of mental images they were asked to create

Question 33

Degraded pictures task

Answer 33

participants identify an object formed by a number of degraded line drawings; object imagers performed better

Question 34

Mental rotation task

Answer 34

participants judge whether images are two views of the same object or mirror-image objects; spatial imagers performed better