Lecture_10_Imagery

Question 1

Modality of Mental Imagery

Answer 1

• Visual
• Auditory
• Tactile
• Olfactory
• Gustatory
• Kinesthetic, Somatic, Motor

Question 2

Visual Imagery

Answer 2

Subjectively feels like “seeing with the mind’s eye”
- I.e., a controlled mental process

Question 3

Visual Imagery Differences to Perception

Answer 3

• Consciously aware of deliberately forming visual images
• Contain much less detail (e.g., lacking sharp edges and borders)
• Weaker, fuzzier form of sensory perception
• Different brain areas

Question 4

Mental Representation

Answer 4

Outside of conscious awareness
- Visual imagery can be both conscious and unconscious

Question 5

Hallucinations

Answer 5

Perception-like experiences in the absence of environmental stimulations
- but are perceived/believed to be reality
- Is not mental imagery

Question 6

Characteristics of the Visual Imagery System

Answer 6

1. Image generation
2. Image inspection
3. Image maintenance
4. Image transformation

Question 7

Mental Rotation Task

Answer 7

Determining whether 2 patterns are identical
- Evidence for mental image transformation
- Reaction time (RT) increases with rotation angles
- Same RT for both 2D and 3D

Question 8

Implications of Mental Rotation Task

Answer 8

• Mental representation resembles a picture, not a verbal concept.
• Linear-relationship in results
  suggests a single process.
• A separate representation system - Imagery

Question 9

How does imagery work?
Is visual imagery a separate representation system?

Answer 9

The debate between depictive and propositional representations

Question 10

Alan Paivio’s Dual-Coding Theory

Answer 10

2 major ways to represent concepts
1) Verbal representations
2) Visual images
▪ A concept can vary along the concrete-abstract dimension
➢ How easy or hard is it to create a mental image?
➢ e.g., flower vs. kindness
▪ Concrete concepts have both verbal + image representations (hence, ‘dual coding’),
but abstract concepts only have verbal
➢ Two is better than one → concrete concepts should be remembered better

Question 11

Concrete-Abstract Dimension

Answer 11

Flower vs. kindness
- Concrete concepts have both verbal + image representations (hence, ‘dual coding’),
- Abstract concepts only have verbal
- Two is better than one: concrete concepts should be remembered better

Question 12

Which condition(s) did p’s remember the best and the worst?
A) Concrete-concrete
B) Concrete-abstract
C) Abstract-concrete
D) Abstract-abstract

Answer 12

• The best: concrete-concrete
• The worst: abstract-abstract

Question 13

Depictive Representations

Answer 13

Resembling a picture
- Visual imagery resembles visual perception
- Objects within it are organized spatially
- Distances among parts in the representation correspond to actual distances

Question 14

Propositional Representations

Answer 14

A non-spatial, language-based representation of an idea or event
- Visual imagery relies on implicit knowledge, and differs from visual
perception
- Verbal, language-based
- Proposition = abstract, basic unit of meaning that has a truth value (true/false)
- May also account for the data

Question 15

Evidence that imagery resembles visual perception

Answer 15

Mental scanning task
- Memorize a map, then later asked to scan the mental image
- Manipulated distance between items in the image
- Distance between items predicted RT

Question 16

Depictive Vs. Propositional Representation Debate

Answer 16

Evidence favors depictive theories as being more parsimonious

Question 17

Principle of Parsimony

Answer 17

Simplest: “Being careful. What else can explain the situation?”
- Depictive representation

Question 18

Epiphenomenon

Answer 18

A perfectly real phenomenon that is
merely a by-product of the process
- Spatial travel through a mental image, OR accessing greater number of links in a proposition?
- Propositional representation

Question 19

Evidence that Imagery Does Not Resemble Perception

Answer 19

Favoring propositional theories
- Abstract animal rotation task showed participant struggled to see rotated image

Question 20

2nd Evidence from mental scanning task

Answer 20

Favoring depictive theories
- Prediction: If mental images are represented spatially, then physical features would not be represented if the image is very small
- Mental zoom rather than use proposition or knowledge
- Relative size of animal predicted RT

Question 21

Neuroimaging Studies

Answer 21

Favoring depictive theories
- Visual mental-imagery tasks activate visual cortex areas (supporting perception), rather than areas known to support language
- Visual buffer -> Attention window -> Other brain areas

Question 22

Visual buffer

Answer 22

A brain area in the early visual cortex: short-term storage for visual information in perception and imagery

Question 23

Attention window

Answer 23

Selects some visual information in this buffer, and passes it onto other brain areas for further processing

Question 24

Image creation

Answer 24

Vision in Reverse

Question 25

Visual Processing

Answer 25

• Bottom-up
• Triggered by a visual stimulus
  1. Occipital lobe ->
  2. Temporal lobe (‘what’) or Parietal lobe (‘where’)
  3. Frontal lobe

Question 26

Imagery Process

Answer 26

• Top-down
• Sensory-memory recall
  1. Frontal lobe
  2. Temporal lobe
  3. Parietal lobe
  4. Occipital lobe

Question 27

Frontal Lobe

Answer 27

Organizing and coordinating sensory and spatial brain areas

Question 28

Temporal Lobe

Answer 28

Retrieving representations stored in memory

Question 29

Parietal Lobe

Answer 29

Spatially manipulating the imagery representation

Question 30

Occipital Lobe

Answer 30

Eliciting a conscious, visual perception-like experience

Question 31

Individual Differences in Visual Imagery Experience

Answer 31

Strength and Vividness of Imagery Content
1) Self-report
2) Neuroimaging data
- Excitability of the visual cortex correlates with imagery strength
- Not trait-like, but likely to change moment-by-moment

Question 32

Aphantasia

Answer 32

Absent vividness
- Difficulty with face recognition and autobiographical memory
- Deficit in voluntary imagery, but claim to still dream visually

Question 33

Hyperphantasia

Answer 33

• Real seeing vividness
• “Eidetic” or “photographic” imagery
• Synaesthesia (“merging of the senses”)
• E.g., experience colors when listening to music, or perceive tastes when looking at words