Lecture 8: Visual Imagery Flashcards
Propositional Code
A representation in the mind based in some sort of symbols/lagnuage. For example, “the globe is on the desk” or “ON (GLOBE, DESK)”
Depictive Code
A picture in the mind of what is being represented, does not apply to concepts such as “justice”
Evidence for Depictive Codes
Interference effects, scanning effects, zooming, transforming/mental rotation
Infinite Regress
Depictive code imagines a thing, who is looking at the thing? Does that person who is looking at the thing have a person inside of their mind building a representation? So on and so on. It would need to stop somewhere, and it does so in a propositional representation.
Interference Effects
Perform two tasks simultaneously (one imagery, one perception), people are worse at each of these tasks when done together, as they interfere. However auditory imagery and visual perception (for example) do not interfere
Scanning Effects
It takes time to go from one end of a mental image to another (Kosslyn image scanning)
Zooming Effect
If imagining a large picture (a rabbit next to the elephant) vs. a small picture (rabbit next to a fly), then people are faster in answering questions about the rabbit in the smaller picture as they did not have to zoom in
Transforming/Mental Rotation Effect
It takes longer for people to recognize if two objects were the same if the degree of rotation was larger
Intermediate Rotations
People rotate things in their head, and so there exist intermediate roations in between the original and rotated images
Demand Characteristics
- Characteristic of an experiment where subjects think that the experimenter wants them to act a certain way, then behaving in that way.
- In the Kosslyn experiment, despite the experimenters being told to expect the opposite results, it still took longer to go between further away objects.
What is easier in perception compared to imagery?
Metric quantities, part-whole relationships (parallelogram in 6-sided star), and ambiguous figures (duck/rabbit drawing)
Compromise Theory
Basic-code is propositional (for long-term storage), propositional code is used to make a depictive image, depictive image can be scanned, zoomed, etc.
Ordered Image Construction
- Drawing an image in order of parts (ex. the letter F)
- Slower to make evaluations about the segment that you draw last
