Chapter 10: Visual Imagery Flashcards
Mental imagery
the ability to create, maintain, and manipulate sensory experiences in the mind without direct sensory input, allowing for simulation, rehearsal, and problem-solving; Mentally picturing your bedroom layout
Visual imagery
the ability to form and manipulate mental “pictures” or visual representations in the absence of actual visual stimuli, essentially; A chess player visualizing future moves before making a decision
Imageless-thought debate
explores whether certain thoughts and mental processes can occur without being accompanied by or reliant on specific images or sensory content
Conceptual-peg hypothesis
suggests that concrete words are easier to remember than abstract words because concrete words are more easily associated with images, acting as “pegs” to which information can be attached
Topographical representation
the mental maps or spatial representations of environments that we use to navigate and understand our surroundings, encompassing both the layout and the relationships between objects and locations
Mental Scanning (Kosslyn, 1973)
the process of mentally “moving” or “scanning” across a mental image, with the time taken to scan between two points in the image correlating with the distance between them
Depictive representations
mental images that resemble real-world objects and maintain their spatial relationships; If you imagine a cat sitting on a table, the cat is “above” the table in your mental image, just as it would be in real life
Imagery Spatial vs Propositional
how we represent mental images: spatial theory suggests mental images are like spatial representations, while propositional theory argues they are abstract, language-like representations
Tacit-knowledge explanation
mental scanning results (like in Kosslyn’s experiment) could be explained by tacit knowledge—our prior knowledge and expectations influence how we respond, rather than mental images being truly spatial; Participants might take longer to scan a longer mental distance because they expect that it should take longer
Finke and Pinker (1982)
tested whether mental imagery is truly spatial or influenced by tacit knowledge by participants were shown a display of dots and then, after a brief delay, an arrow pointing at a location. They had to decide if the arrow pointed to where a dot had been; Reaction time increased with distance, even though participants had no time to memorize distances (disproving tacit knowledge explanations)
Mental-walk task
experimental technique where participants imagine walking towards a mental image of an object or animal until it fills their visual field, used to study spatial imagery and mental representation
Perky (1910)
Perky showed that visual imagery and perception interact, Participants were asked to imagine an object on a blank screen while a faint image of the object was secretly projected onto the screen; participants mistakenly thought they were imagining the projected image
Imagery Neurons
Researchers discovered neurons in the brain that fire when a person imagines a specific object, such as a baseball or a face
Kreiman et al. (2000)
found neurons in the human medial temporal lobe (MTL) that selectively responded to specific categories of objects, like faces, animals, and houses, during both visual perception and visual imagery, suggesting a shared neural basis for these processes
LeBihan et al. (1993)
found that the primary visual cortex (V1) is activated during visual recall, suggesting that mental imagery and perception share overlapping brain mechanisms
Unilateral neglect
a neurological syndrome where patients ignore one side of space, often due to damage in the right parietal lobe; A patient might only eat food from the right side of their plate or only draw the right side of an object
Visual agnosia
a neurological disorder where individuals have difficulty recognizing familiar objects or faces despite having normal visual acuity and intact memory, language, and intelligence; A person might not recognize a key by sight but can recognize it by touch
Method of loci
a memory enhancement strategy that uses visualization of familiar spatial environments to recall information by associating items to be remembered with specific locations; To remember a grocery list imagine placing “milk” on your couch and “bread” on your table when u walk
Pegword technique
aids memory by associating items to be remembered with a pre-memorized list of words (the “pegs”) that rhyme with numbers; using rhyming words for numbers like bun with peanut butter
