Intro to Cognition (Quiz # 9) Flashcards
What increases brain activity?
Producing mental images increases brain activity, especially in the occipital and temporal lobes
What can Damage to the occipital lobes lead to?
Affects form and color perception.
What did De Renzi & Spinnler (1967) Experiment find
I asked participants to identify the colour of a banana.
Results:
(inability to recognize faces) was observed
Colour-blindness linked to brain damage
What was the Early belief of Mental Images
Mental images are represented as complete pictures
What is the current belief of Mental Images
Mental images are stored abstractly, not as literal pictures
Visual Imagery
Mental representation of objects or events not currently present.
Two distinct processes involved:
Spatial aspects
Imagery aspects
What are the two theories of Storage and Recall of Visual Images
Separate LTM for verbal and visual material.
All material is converted into images for storage.
Dual Coding Hypothesis (Paivio)
There are two coding systems:
Verbal
Visual
Participants were aksed to rate nouns based on how easy it was to think of a mental image for that noun. Results showed that nouns that describes real tangible items were higher ranked on the list.
Imagery and Paired-Associates Learning (Paivio
Experiemnt: A “stimulus word” is a word you see first (e.g., “apple”). A “response word” is a word you are asked to remember that relates to the stimulus (e.g., “tree”).
Results: Recall was highest when both words had strong imagery associations
Bower’s Research on Visual Images
People were asked to remember pairs of objects (e.g., “dog” and “ball”).
They were divided into three groups:
Group I: Imagined the objects interacting (e.g., a dog playing with a ball).
Group II: Imagined the objects separately (e.g., a dog and a ball not connected).
Group III: Didn’t imagine anything special (just a regular memory test)
Results: The group that visualized objects interacting had higher recall, suggesting that the association between images boosts memory
Wollen, Weber & Lowry (Bizarreness and Recall)
Participants learned pairs of words (like “dog” and “hat”) with pictures showing the words.
The pictures were either:
Showing the words interacting (e.g., a dog wearing a hat).
Or not interacting (e.g., a dog next to a hat).
Some pictures were bizarre (unusual or strange), and others were normal.
What They Found:
Bizarre pictures didn’t help people remember better.
Interacting pictures helped people remember the word pairs much better
Mental Rotation
The process of rotating a mental image of an object to judge whether it matches another
Shepard et al. (Mental Rotation)
Experiment: Participants judged if probe items were identical to a test item by mentally rotating them.
Rotation varied from 0 to 180 degrees.
Conclusion: Mental rotation is similar to physical rotation. More significant rotation takes more time to process
Podgorny & Shepard (1978)
Experiment: Participants were asked to imagine a dot inside or outside of a letter formed by a 5x5 grid.
Results:
Reaction time was similar for both physically presented and visualized tasks.
Shorter reaction time when probes were inside the figure, and when the figures were simpler or at junctions of parts.
What did Kosslyn and Associates think of Visual Memory and Spatial Characteristics?
Mental images have spatial details, like real objects
Scanning mental image takes about the same time as scanning something real, showing that mental images behave like real-world objects in your mind.
