Chapter 7 Flashcards
Mental imagery
The mental representation of stimuli when those stimuli are not physically present
Perception
Uses previous knowledge to gather and interpret the stimuli registered by the senses
Bottom up and top down processing
Analog code
A representation that closely resembles the physical object
Propositional code
An abstract, language-like representation
What part of the brain is activated when people work on tasks that require detailed visual imagery?
Primary visual cortex
- When people were told to rotate a figure, what part of their brain was activated?
- However, what was activated when it was worded differently?
- Frontal and parietal lobes
2. Left temporal lobe and part of the motor cortex
Experimenter expectancy
The researcher’s biases and expectation influence the outcomes of the experiment
Masking effect
People can see a visual target more accurately if they create mental images of vertical lines on each side of the target
Demand characteristics
All the cues that might convey the experimenter;s hypothesis to the participant
What cognitive skill do males perform better in than females?
Mental rotation
Pitch
A characteristic of a sound stimulus that can be arranged on a scale from low to high
Timbre
Describes the sound quality of a tone
Cognitive map
A mental representation of geographic information, including the environment that surrounds us
Spatial cognition
Refers to 3 cognitive activities:
Our thoughts about cognitive maps
How we remember the world we navigate
How we keep track of objects in a spatial array
Heuristic
General problem solving strategy that usually produces a correct solution
3 things that distort people’s estimation of distance
Number of intervening cities
Category membership
Whether their destination is a landmark
Border bias
People estimate that the distance between 2 specific locations is larger if they are on different sides of a geographic border compared to the same
Landmark effect
The general tendency to provide shorter estimates when travelling to a landmark rather than non-landmark
90-degree-angle heuristic
People represent angles in a mental map as being closer to 90 degrees than they really are
Symmetry heuristic
We remember figures as being more symmetrical and regular than they truly are
Rotational heuristic
We remember a slightly tilted geographic structure either as being more vertical or more horizontal than it really is
(A single structure)
The alignment heuristic
We remember a series of geographic structures as being arranged in a straighter line than they really are
(Several structures)
Spatial framework model
Emphasizes that the above-below spatial demension is especially important in our thinking, the front-back is moderate, and the right-left dimension is least important
Situated cognition approach
We make use of the helpful information in the immediate environment or situation
Knowledge depends on the context that surrounds us
Concreteness effect
2 codes are better than one (analog and propositional)
People are better at remembering things that can be easily pictures (concrete nouns > abstract nouns)
4 different lines of evidence for analog coding
Behavioural effects (mental rotation, size, distance, magnitude)
Shared neural activity
Neural specialization
Interference
Retinotopy in V1
Captures the idea that spatial relationships in the world are being mapped on to spatial relationships in the brain
V1 = visual cortex
What happens if you damage the right parietal areas?
Hemi spatial neglect
Also neglect left side of space in mental imagery
Parahippocampal place area
Gets really excited about places
What is modality specific interference?
People are better at detecting auditory stimuli when imagining visual, and vice versa
Picturing images and seeing images share some neural structures
3 challenges to a strict analog view
Double dissociation
Embedded image
Imagery illusions
Double dissociation
Can have good perception but poor imagery and vice versa
Shows that imagery and perception are not identical because you can damage them independently
Damage at different levels of visual processing
Embedded images
Easier to see parallelograms in perception over imagery
We must use some propositional coding
Imagery illusions
Cannot reverse illusions in mental imagery, but can do it if you’re looking at it or are asked to draw it
