Imagery Flashcards
What is imagery?
A form of representation based on the memory in order to make explicit and accessible properties of objects
What is Charles Bonnet syndrome and what has been found?
- recurrent detailed hallucinations occurring alongside eye disease
- fMRI shows activation of visual areas
What differentiates images from perceptions?
- Awareness of constructed images
- Images are often less detailed
What is the perceptual anticipation theory?
That images are depictive representations with the same organisation as perception and that the same brain areas are involved in early visual processing (visual buffer) - Kosyhn 2005
What are the 2 predictions of the visual anticipation theory?
Facilitation and interference
What evidence is there for facilitation?
Pearson, Clifford & Tong (2008)
Stimuli imagined more likely to be perceived (colour = orientation)
What evidence is there for interference?
Baddely & Andrade 2000
Image perceived as less vivid when given dual visual-spatial task
What is Pavio’s dual coding hypothesis?
That there is visual and verbal representation coding - recall for concrete imageable words is better than of non-imageable words
What did Shepard & Metzler (1971) find?
That time taken to identify whether images were identical was linearly related to the degree of rotation
What areas of the brain are associated with imagery?
- posterior left cortex
- primary visual cortex
How is imagery affected in visual agnosia?
- Not able to discriminate overlapping drawings of objects
- However able to imagine visual shapes and manipulate them
What is reflective thinking?
Insufficient info in the LTM and so WM is employed to create new associations and descriptions
How do adults and children differ in their usage of imagery?
Children more likely to rely on imagery as less LTM to rely on
How is reflective thinking related to PTSD?
Maintenance of trauma by generating more associations to an image making it more likely to be triggered
How can imagery be used in therapy?
- Positive imagery training
- Desensitisation of a feared object
