Chapter 10: Visual Imagery Flashcards
_____ is experiencing a sensory impression in the absence of sensory input, and _____ is “seeing” in the absence of a visual stimulus.
Mental imagery; Visual imagery
The founder of behaviorism, John _____ described images as “unproven” and “mythological” (1928) and therefore not worthy of study.
John Watson
Early ideas about imagery included the _____ debate (the debate about whether thought is possible in the absence of images) and Galton’s work with visual images, but imagery research stopped during the behaviorist era.
Imageless thought debate
Paivio (1963) showed that it was easier to remember concrete nouns, like truck or tree, that can be imaged than it is to remember abstract nouns, like truth or justice, that are difficult to image. One technique Paivio used was _____ learning (boat-hat, car-house) where remembering one word improved recall of the other.
Paired-associate learning
Paivio (1963, 1965) proposed the _____ hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, concrete nouns create images that other words can “hang onto.” For example, if presenting the pair “boat–hat” creates an image of a boat, then presenting the word boat later will bring back the boat image, which provides a number of places on which participants can place the hat in their mind.
Conceptual peg hypothesis
Shepard and Metzler (1971) inferred cognitive processes by using _____, determining the amount of time needed to carry out various cognitive tasks. This was used during a mental rotation experiment in which participants decided whether two views of an object were from the same object.
What was important about this experiment was that it was one of the first to apply quantitative methods to the study of imagery and to suggest that imagery and perception may share the same mechanisms.
Mental chronometry
The idea, that there is a spatial correspondence between imagery and perception, is supported by a number of experiments by Stephen Kosslyn involving a task called _____, in which participants create mental images and then scan them (find certain features) in their minds.
Kosslyn’s experiments suggested that imagery shares the same mechanisms as perception (that is, creates a depictive representation in the person’s mind).
Mental scanning
A debate about whether imagery is based on spatial mechanisms, such as those involved in perception, or on mechanisms related to language, called propositional mechanisms.
Imagery debate
A representation in which different parts of an image can be described as corresponding to specific locations in space.
Spatial representations
A task used in imagery experiments in which participants are asked to form a mental image of an object and to imagine that they are walking toward this mental image. As the mental image fills more of the visual field, more detail is available. This proves mental images are spatial, just like perception.
Mental walk task
A problem caused by brain damage, usually to the right parietal lobe, in which the patient ignores objects in the left half of his or her visual field).
Unilateral neglect
A method in which things to be remembered are placed at different locations in a mental image of a spacial layout (huge pair of teeth in bathroom).
Method of loci
A method for remembering things in which the things to be remembered are associated with concrete words.
Pegword technique
Refers to the ability to image spatial relations, such as the layout of a garden.
Spatial imagery
Refers to the ability to image visual details, features, or objects, such as a rose bush with bright red roses in the garden.
Object imagery
