Exam 4 Flashcards
Why is it difficult to understand mental imagery using only introspection?
A. People sometimes describe the same things differently
B. Peoples introspections widely vary
C. Introspection is subjective
(All the above)
The mental rotation demonstration predicts that when comparing two shapes that are in fact the same, a participant’s RT will have what type of relationship with the number of degrees the second shape is rotated from the first shape?
Linear
If it takes you one second to mentally rotate an object thirty degrees, how long will it take you to mentally rotate the same object sixty degrees?
2 seconds
A mental image could be useful for which kind of the following tasks?
A. Trying to figure out a way to fit your hair dryer in your suitcase
B. Coming up with directions to your apartment
C. Describing what your childhood home looked like
(All of the above)
While doing a mental rotation experiment like the one in the demonstration, participants will often report…
That they observe the two objects and eventually have a spontaneous insight into wether or not the two objects are the same.
Definition of CONCEPT
The mental representation of a class or individual meanings of objects, events, and abstract ideas.
Definition of CATEGORIES
Includes all exemplars of a particular concept
Definition of CLASSICAL VIEW
Necessary and sufficient features that are singly necessary and jointly sufficient to define something within a category
Problem: many things do not have uniform necessary and sufficient features to be categorized with (I.e. golf, swimming, or bowling categorized as sports)
Definition of PROTOTYPE-BASED CATEGORIZATION
- A small number of particularly good examples, which are called prototypes
- the “average” representation of a category
Birds are a category but there are many different kinds of species that act as exemplars
Definition of EXEMPLAR-BASED CATEGORIZATION
Rather than abstracting and sorting through a single prototype, people retain information about all of the individual exemplars, which are actual members of a category that they have encountered in the past.
-To determine how well an item fits into a category, it is compared to known exemplars (instances)
Definition of TYPICALITY EFFECT
Prototypical objects are processed preferentially
- processed with faster RTs
- more affected by a priming stimulus
Rule Based Theory
Rules dictate categorical membership
- birds don’t have fur
- A bay has similar features like wings but because it has fur, it is not a bird
Which methods of categorization do we use, and what are different scenarios in which one might be better than the other?
Prototype Approach -works better for larger categories Exemplar Approach -works better for small categories Rules -may override the instances and prototypes
We use a combination of rules, prototypes, and instances
What was done in the experiment done by Posner and Kelle (1968?)
What were the results of their experiment?
What was done in the related Reed (1972) experiment?
Posner & Keele:
-4 categories
-4 exemplars to each cat with minor variations between each
-Subjects tested on accuracy of categorization
-Original Exemplars: 80%
-New Exemplars: 50%
-Prototypes: 68%
Reed:
Categorize 10 faces into two cats
-accuracy for new Exemplars: 61%
-accuracy for prototypes: 90%What is family resemblance as it relates to categorization?
How is it measured?
Family Resemblance: things in a category resemble each other in a number of ways
Led psychs to believe that categorization is based on how similar an object is to some standard representation of a category
Subjects list characteristics of as many common objects as possible- objects with more overlaps of characteristics were more likely to be identified as from the same category
What is Sentence Verification Technique?
A technique in which a subject is asked to indicate whether a particular sentence is true or false.
-Subjects respond faster for objects with high prototypicality—-> typicality effect
What is Priming and when does it occur?
Priming: the implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influenced response to a later stimulus.
This occurs when the presentation of one stimulus changes the way a person responds to another stimulus
-following perceptual, semantic, or conceptual stimulus repetition
What is the semantic network model?
What is spreading activation?
Semantic Network Model: concepts are arranged in networks that represent the way concepts are organized in the mind
Cognitive Economy: share properties are only stored at higher level nodes
Spreading Activation: when a node is activated, activity spreads out along related conceptual links; activated concepts are primed and more easily accessed from memory.
How did Shepard (1967) study examining memory for pictures and memory for words work?
What were the results?
- Gave 612 images to test subjects for review.
- Tested them with pairs of images (100 they had seen and 100 new images)
- Subjects were near 100% accurate immediately after review and 55% accurate after 4 months
- similar study done with words found that subjects persisted memories of images for considerably longer than words (which have about a 3 day degradation to 55%
What leads to good formation of visual memories?
- Attention to details
- Meaningfulness and relevance of details
- Distinctive alternatives
What is Paivio’s dual-code hypothesis?
What predictions did it make?
Assumes there are two cognitive subsystems- verbal (imagery) and non-verbal (language)
3 types of processing:
- Representational: the direct activation of verbal or non-verbal representations
- Referential: the activation of the verbal system by the nonverbal system or visa versa
- Associative processing: the activation of representations within the same verbal or nonverbal system
Concrete words: have verbal and nonverbal codes
Abstract words: have only verbal codes
What did Jonides and colleagues (1985) study to demonstrate about conceptual knowledge?
Cognitive maps show a linear relation between perceived distances and actual distances between mental maps and actual physical locations
Heuristics can be misleading
-more familiar areas are remembered as more vast than unfamiliar areas
What did mental scanning experiments find?
Mental Scanning: when subjects create mental images and then scan them with their “mind’s eye.”
Koddlyn:
RTs measured for subjects identifying parts of an image from a specific point.
-the further from the starting point the went (mentally), the longer their RTs were.
How did Kosslyn interpret the results of his research on imagery?
- from a starting point, RTs increase the further from it you mentally travel
- Different parts of the image correspond to different locations in space
- positive linear relationship between distance and RT; visual imagery is spatial in nature
What is the pegword technique?
Pegword Technique: a memory aid that involves linking words with numbers. Utilized by creating mental associations between items to be remembered and items that are already associated with numbers- involves mental imagery
E.g. one-bun, two-shoe, three-tree, four-door
What are the similarities between imagery and perception? What are the differences?
Similarities:
-overlap in the areas of the brain used for perception and visual imagery
Differences:
- perception is automatic whereas imagery takes deliberate effort
- perceptual images easier to recover
- visual imagery degrades without consistent recall
What did Bergman and coworkers suggest about the double disassociation between perception and imagery?
The mechanisms of perception and imagery overlap only partially, with the mechanism for perception being located at both higher and lower visual centers and the mechanism for imagery being located mainly in higher visual centers (of 288-290)
Eg. bottom up processing
How are neuropsychological findings related to imagery vs. perception explained?
- Mental images are real- they share many of the same properties as precepts, but also differ in important ways.
- mental imagery relies on many of the same brain regions as perception- this overlap may explain why imagined events can have as powerful of an emotional influence on people as perceived events
- neuropsychological evidence suggests that
- imagery of spatial information is supported by parietal structures, and
- imagery of objects and their visual properties are supported by temporal structures
What are the results of the Gains and coworkers fMRI study that measured brain activation for perception and imagery of objects?
PET/fMRI studies showed 70-80% if brain areas overlapped between perception and imagery of an object
Where has it been proposed that the mechanism for imagery is located in the brain?
- Mechanism for imagery and perception overlap partially
- mechanism for imagery is located mainly in higher visual center, and involves top-down processing
- mechanism for perception is located at both lower and higher visual centers. Perception involved bottom-up processing
- unilateral neglect provides evidence that the mechanism for imagery is located in the brain
What are imagery neurons?
What do they respond to?
What is an epiphenomenon?
Imagery Neuron:
neurons that not only fire for a physical stimulus, but a mental image of it as well; neurons that respond to both perceiving and imagining an object
Epiphenomenon:
Something that accompanied the real mechanism but is not actually a part of the mechanism. Mental images indicate that something is happening in the mind but don’t tell us how it is happening.
