Chapter 10: Visual Imagery

Question 1

Visual Imagery

Answer 1

Seeing in the absence of a visual stimulus

Question 2

Mental Imagery

Answer 2

• Broader than visual imagery
• The ability to recreate the sensory world in the absence of physical stimuli
• Refers to all senses

Question 3

History of Imagery in Psychology: Imageless Thought Debate

Answer 3

• Some psychologists said thoughts were impossible without images
• Others said thinking can occur w/o images

Question 4

History of Imagery in Psychology: Paired-Associate Learning Experiments

Answer 4

• p’s are presented with pairs of words initially, later asked to recall the second word after hearing the first word
• used in mental imagery experiments to show that concrete nouns are easier to remember than abstract ones due to better visualization

Question 5

History of Imagery in Psychology: Paivio’s Conceptual Peg Hypothesis

Answer 5

• Concrete nouns create images that other words can ‘hang onto’ and are therefore easier to remember

Question 6

History of Imagery in Psychology: Shepard & Metzler’s Mental Chronometry

Answer 6

• Determined the amount of time needed for various cognitive tasks
• P’s were said to be ‘mentally rotating’ objects in order to verify if they were the same shape
• Mental rotation = mental imagery

Question 7

The Mechanisms of Imagery vs Perception

Answer 7

While imagery is not as vivid or lasting as perception, they share many similarities

Question 8

The Mechanisms of Imagery vs Perception: Kosslyn’s Mental Scanning

Answer 8

• P’s create mental images and then scan them in their minds
• Increased time to find objects farther away from the middle was evidence for mental scanning

Question 9

The Mechanisms of Imagery vs Perception: The Imagery Debate

Answer 9

Is imagery based on spatial mechanisms (like perception) or propositional mechanisms (like language - conceptual)

Question 10

The imagery Debate: Kosslyn’s Spatial Representations

Answer 10

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

Question 11

The Mechanisms of Imagery vs Perception: Pylyshyn’s Spatial Experience as Epiphenomenon

Answer 11

Pylyshyn argued against Kosslyn, claiming that just because we experience imagery as spatial doesn’t mean it uses the same underlying mechanisms as perception

Question 12

The Mechanisms of Imagery vs Perception: Pylyshyn’s Propositional Representations

Answer 12

• Representations in which relationships can be represented by abstract symbols
• Can be thought of like a math equation (2 + 2 are abstract concepts) which can also be represented spatially (2 beers + 2 beers = 4 beers)

Question 13

The Mechanisms of Imagery vs Perception: Depictive Representations

Answer 13

Non-abstract representations of actual things
- i.e., a picture of a cat underneath a table

Question 14

Comparing Imagery & Perception: Mental Walk Task

Answer 14

• P’s were asked to imagine themselves walking toward a mental image of an animal and say how close they were before the image filled their ‘visual field’
• Results showed that mental imagery was similar to perceptual imagery

Question 15

Imagery & The Brain: Imagery Neurons

Answer 15

• Brain measuring found evidence for neurons that fired both when p’s saw a pic of a baseball and when they were asked to picture a baseball
• Evidence for imagery & perception sharing the same mechanisms

Question 16

Imagery & The Brain: A Topographic Map

Answer 16

• Showed that looking at smaller shit activated neurons farther back in the occip lobe and bigger shit activated them further forward
• When asked to imagine small and big shit, the same pattern was seen
• More evidence for shared fuckin mechanisms between imagery & perception

Question 17

Imagery & The Brain: Multivoxel Pattern Analysis (MVPA)

Answer 17

• A CPU programmed to detect patterns of brain behaviour was able to guess (above chance) what a person was imagining based on brain patterns from when they were actually perceiving shit
• More evidence for shared mechanisms between imagery & perception

Question 18

Imagery & The Brain: Patient M.G.S & Removing the Visual Cortex

Answer 18

• Removing part of her visual cortex in turn made her mental-visual field smaller
• More evidence for shared mechanisms!

Question 19

Imagery & The Brain: Unilateral Neglect

Answer 19

• Damage to the parietal lobes can cause patient’s to not be able to see shit in one half of the visual field
• This has been shown also in mental images, implying that mental imagery & perception share mechanisms again

Question 20

Imagery & The Brain: Dissociation Between Imagery & Perception

Answer 20

• There have been cases of people with brain damage that caused impaired imagery but not perception & vice versa
• Evidence for different mechanisms this time!!

Question 21

Imagery & Memory: The Method of Loci

Answer 21

• A method of remembering where one imagines a spatial layout that’s familiar and then places things to remember within that layout

Question 22

Imagery & Memory: The Pegword Technique

Answer 22

• Make a list of rhyming words with numbers
• Associate these rhyming words with items in a list that need to be remembered

Question 23

Individual Differences in Visual Imagery: Spatial Imagery vs. Object Imagery

Answer 23

• Spatial Imagery: The ability to imagine spatial relations (i.e., the layout of a garden)
• Obect imagery: The ability to imagine visual details, features, or objects (i.e., a rose bush with bright red roses)

Question 24

Individual Differences in Visual Imagery: The Paper Folding Test (PFT)

Answer 24

• Designed to measure spatial imagery
• P’s see a piece of paper folded and then hole-punched
• Have to choose from a group what it will look like after it’s unfolded

Question 25

Spatial vs Object Imagers: The Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ)

Answer 25

• Designed to measure object imagery
• Rated out of 5 the vividness of a mental picture they were asked to create

Question 26

Spatial vs Object Imagers: The PFT vs The VVIQ

Answer 26

• Tests were shown to be negatively correlated! (Low PFT = High VVIQ & vice versa)

Question 27

Spatial vs Object Imagers: The Degraded Pictures Task vs. The Mental Rotation Task

Answer 27

• Degraded Picture Task: a line drawing is presented hidden between a bunch of little marks & lines (object imagers did better)
• Mental Rotation Task: Asked p’s to judge if an object was the same or different than a rotated one (spatial imagers did better)