Lesson 7 - questions

Question 1

Define “imagery.” Define “visual imagery” and “auditory imagery.” Provide examples of each. Do Demonstration 7.1. Describe Shepard and Metzler’s research on mental images and their major findings. What are the more recent findings involving mental rotation? What does the neuroscience literature reveal

Answer 1

imagery: aka mental imagery, is the mental representation of stimuli when those stimuli are not physically present in the environment (can happen with any sensory experience)

visual imagery: mental representation of physical stimuli
auditory imagery: mental representation of auditory stimuli

• need mental imagery when searching for the car keys you lost
• many professions need it (ex. pilot - spatial imagery)
• spatial imagery very important in the STEM disciplines (science, tech, eng, math)
• training in spatial skills can be beneficial at any age

imagery and perception are different things

• perception involves sensory systems registering the information, then the features of the stimulus are detected
• this bottom-up info about the sensory stimulus is processed in progressively more complex ways until an internal representation of the stimulus exists, and its matched w a pre-existing image in your long term memory (top-down)

mental imagery is knowledge-driven—it involves utilizing the information stored in long-term memory to create internal images of sounds and objects that you have previously experienced.

• its an exception to the rule that all cognitive processes must involve both bottom up and top down processing
• allows you to create the same pic in your head that perception does but you only are using top-down processing
• you rely only on your long term memory to create this mental image
• mental images arise as the result of a thought process

internal mental images needed for everyday tasks

since Watson couldn’t connect mental imagery to observable behaviour, he claimed it doesn’t exist

• studied now but its hard to study bc its inaccessible
• if a mental image matches a physical object then studies can use the physical object to represent the mental image
• physcial image properties should be examined same way for mental

mental rotation:
-may not always have conscious access to the processes associated with our mental imagery when studying mental imagery because there could be cognitive bias

Shephard Metzler study:

• takes longer for you to rotate a mental image than it does the physical one
• in their study they had participants judge if 2 images were the same, just rotated
• decision time was strongly correlated with the difficulty of the rotation
• 3D rotation happened almost as fast as 2D
• linear relation between rotation and reaction time
• found right handed ppl performed right rotations faster than left, and lefties performed both at equal speed, but both groups recognized right side up pics faster than upside down
• younger ppl perform mental rotation faster than elderly, but age is not consistently correlated with other imagery skills, such as sense of direction or the ability to scan mental images
• deaf ppl are skilled at 180 deg rotation of images

Cognitive neuroscience research:

• do ppl use their motor cortex when they perform mental rotation?
• study where 1/2 participants rotated a figure physically with their hands and the other 1/2 rotated with a device, then both groups performed a mental rotation of the same object
• those who used their hands showed activation in the primary motor cortex (visible on PET scan) vs other group did not
• when ppl received standard instructions on the mental rotation task, their right frontal lobes and parietal lobes were activated
• when told to rotate so they could ‘see’ the figure from another perspective, caused left temporal lobe and part of the motor cortex to become activated

good for stroke patients - can exercise their motor cortex in mental rot tasks!

Question 2

What is the imagery debate? Define “analog code” and “propositional code.” What is the status of this debate, and what are the relevant neuroscience findings?

Comment: One way to better understand the debate between analog code and propositional code is to consider the difference between vinyl records and CDs. Vinyl records are an example of an analog representation because the grooves in the vinyl represent in a one-to-one fashion the sounds that we hear (i.e., the deeper the groove, the higher the pitch.) Compact discs are an example of a propositional code. In this case, the sounds are represented as a sequence of binary digits that have no analogous relation to the sound they represent. The digital code is an abstract code. Despite the dramatic differences in sound representation (vinyl versus CD), it is difficult to tell the difference between CDs and vinyl records when played on comparable equipment. Still, the underlying representations are fundamentally different. We see these differences in representation in communications (analog phones and digital phones) and television (analog televisions and digital televisions).

It is important to understand the logic of how to interpret tests of the analog versus propositional hypotheses. If mental images really resemble the physical objects, then the decision times or judgments about images should be similar to the decision times or judgments about actual objects. When the decisions are similar in both perception and imagery, then researchers use this evidence to argue for an analog code. When the decisions are different, researchers use this evidence to argue for a propositional code.

Answer 2

the imagery debate: do mental images resemble perception (using an analog code) or language (using a propositional code)
-most theorists think analog

analog code: representation that closely resembles a physical object

• says mental imagery is closely related to perception
• When you look at a sketch of a triangle, the physical features of that triangle are registered in your brain in a form that preserves the physical relationship among the three lines. Those who support analog coding propose that your mental image of a triangle is registered in a somewhat similar fashion, preserving the same relationship among the lines. Under this framework, when you are engaged in mental imagery, you create a mental image of an object that closely resembles the actual perceptual image on your retina
• not saying that you literally have a picture in your head
• ppl often fail to notice precise physical details of an object, which are missing in their metal image

propositional code: an abstract, language-like representation, which is neither visual nor spatial, and doesn’t physically resemble the stimulus

• brain registers a language-like description of a stim
• closely related to language, but is not English or another natural language
• brain uses verbal description to create a visual image
• Pylyshyn, a supporter of this theory says we store mental images but they aren’t a key part of imagery
• says we don’t have the storage space for all that
• says theres a distinction between mental images and perceptual experiences (you can re-examine a real photo, but mental images aren’t as stable)

Shephard and Metzler support analog approach
-their research would not be supported by propositional approach, since In this case there would be similar reaction times for these two conditions; the language-like description for the figure would not vary with the amount of rotation

neuroimaging also supports analog approach

• primary visual cortex is activated when we see physical objects and when we create mental images
• ppl w prosopagnosia have issues creating visual imagery for faces + they can’t use mental imagery to process faces
• visual imagery activates 70-90% of the same brain regions as visual perception
• visual cortex damage creates issues w visual imagery
• some of those w brain damage cannot distinguish between (1) the colours registered during visual perception and (2) the visual imagery created in a mental image.

the only thing the analog approach can’t account for is ambiguous visual images

-analog better at explaining most tasks
most ppl’s research support this
-its likely that both approaches are partly correct
-when the stimuli or situations make it difficult to use analog codes, we may create a verbal representation, using a propositional code
-individual differences present

Question 3

Summarize Reed’s (1974) study on reinterpreting mental images and Chambers and Reisbergs’s (1985) study of ambiguous figures. Do these findings support the analog or propositional view? Describe the study on visualizers and verbalizers, and summarize the major findings.

Answer 3

Reed:
-concerned that mental imagery has limitations
-tested ppls ability to decide whether a visual pattern was part of a design they had seen earlier
-ppl were only correct on these 14% of the time in the star-parallelogram ex and 55% for all others
–this suggests that our mental images don’t directly resemble perceptual images
-Reed argued that ppl didn’t store the mental images give the high error rate
-he says ppl store pictures as descriptions - support for propositional code
-ambigous figures can be stored in different ways
ex. the duck-rabbit photo
when ppl were asked to look at the image and then reference back to it, they would either say a duck or a rabbit and then when asked if they could give another description of what it could be, none could.. this suggests that they never stored a mental image
-then asked to draw their image, in which case they could give a second description
-suggests a strong verbal description can override a weak analog code

• seems like ppl use analog code for simple figures, and propositional for more complex
• since storage for visual imagery is limited, its maybe easier to store verbal descriptions of complex figures
• observers can locate similar, unanticipated shapes in their mental images

individual differences in mental imagery:

• differences in mental imagery and verbal descriptions during cognitive processing
• visualizers: ppl who can form strong mental images
• verbalizers: rely more on verbal descriptions for mental imagery
• these aren’t discrete categories, just biases
• MEG imaging used to detect activity of those who self-report being verbalizers vs visualizers
• visualizers produced more activity in occipital regions of cortex, regions that are strongly implicated in processing visual information. Verbalizers, on the other hand, produced more activation in areas often associated with linguistic processing, such as frontal cortical areas

Question 4

Summarize Kosslyn’s classic research on distances in mental images and scanning times. Summarize Paivio’s research using mental clocks and the angles formed by the two clock hands. Do these findings support the analog position or the propositional position?

Answer 4

Kosslyn

• seems like ppl use analog code for simple figures, and propositional for more complex
• since storage for visual imagery is limited, its maybe easier to store verbal descriptions of complex figures
• observers can locate similar, unanticipated shapes in their mental images

research showed that ppl take a long time to scan between two widely separated points on a mental image of a map that they had created, and quickly scanned btwn two close by points
-linear relationship between point distance and time to scan

Paivio did the same type of research, but with hands of a clock and how the distance btwn the 2 hands affects the ability to scan btwn them

• participants also did standardized testing on their visual imagery ability… high imagery ppl performed better on clock task
• this supports analog, not propositional

shape of objects mentally are similar to physical shapes

Question 5

Summarize the research findings on whether visual images interfere with visual perception and what this finding means. Do these findings support the analog position or the propositional position? What are demand characteristics, and how were they ruled out as an explanation of findings?

Answer 5

-mental image can interfere w physical one

visual imagery can interfere w visual perception
ex. you can’t picture a grilled cheese at the same time as you read the textbook

study

• told ppl to picture a tree and then put a blue arrow in front of them to see if they would detect its physical presence
• when making a mental image the participants had trouble picking up the physical one
• when told to come up with a sound in their head they had no trouble spotting the arrow

study
-told participants to create a visual image of a set of narrow parallel lines. Next, they were instructed to rotate their mental image of this set of lines, so that the lines were in a diagonal orientation. Meanwhile, the researchers presented a physical stimulus, a small segment of a line. The participants were told to judge whether this line segment had an exactly vertical orientation. The results showed that the imagined set of lines and the real set of lines produced similar distortions in the participants’ judgments about the orientation of that line segment

• research in visual perception shows that ppl see a stim better if its surrounded by vertical lines around it and for some reason the same thing works for mental imagery… (“masking effect”)
• demand characteristics: all the cues that might give away the experimenter’s hypothesis to the participants
• demand characteristics cannot account for the masking effect with mental images bc you wouldn’t expect it to be a thing

-people have especially good acuity for mental images that are visualized in the center of the retina, rather than in the periphery; visual perception operates the same way

Question 6

Summarize the gender differences in spatial ability. What is a meta-analysis?

Answer 6

most gender differences in cognitive abilities are small

meta-analysis: statistical method for combining numerous studies on a single topic. Researchers begin by locating all appropriate studies on a topic such as gender comparisons in verbal ability. Then they perform a meta-analysis that combines the results of all these studies.

meta-analyses of cognitive abilities by gender

• no significant diff in math or verbal ability
• small diff in spatial ability

spatial ability has many moving parts

1. spatial visualization (small gender Diff here)
2. spatial perception (moderate diff)
3. mental rotation (mod-large diff)

mental rotation is the only cognitive skill where men are more likely to perform better than women but some studies also say theres no diff

• diff may be due to boys experience w toys and sports
• this one area of cognitive gender differences can be reduced by providing girls with experience and training in spatial activities

Question 7

Summarize the research on auditory imagery in the areas of pitch and timbre. Why is the study of auditory imagery important?

Answer 7

2/3 of imagery is visual
-not a ton of auditory imagery research

• pitch: a characteristic of a sound stimulus that can be arranged on a scale from low to high
• In the case of pitch, the distance between the two actual tones is indeed correlated with the distance between the two imagined tones
• timbre: sound quality of a tone (ex. trumpet v flute sound)
• timbre imagery is highly correlated w timbre perception

Question 8

Define “cognitive maps” and “spatial cognition.” Explain how the two terms are related. What are heuristics, and how are they related to cognitive maps?

Comment: To appreciate the mental processes associated with cognitive maps, it is useful to create or draw your own map. Use your current dwelling and the place where you work (or go to school) as the two end points on your map. Then record as best you can the roads and landmarks that fall between these two end points. When you are done, consult an actual map of the area in question, and note the accuracies and inaccuracies in your map.

Answer 8

cognitive map: mental representation of geographic information, including the environment that surrounds us

• looks at relationships between different objects
• we create a cognitive map by integrating the information that we have acquired from many successive views

emphasis on real world settings, research has high eco validity

spatial cognition: primarily refers to three cognitive activities: (1) our thoughts about cognitive maps; (2) how we remember the world we navigate; and (3) how we keep track of objects in a spatial array

individual differences in spatial-cognition skills are quite large. However, people tend to be accurate in judging their ability to find their way to unfamiliar locations …your metacognition about your spatial ability may be reasonably correct.

• individual differences in spatial cognition are correlated with people’s scores on tests of the visuospatial sketchpad
• people who are good at mental rotation are more skilled than others in using maps to find a particular location

Our cognitive maps typically include survey knowledge, which is the relationship among locations that we acquire by directly learning a map or by repeatedly exploring an environment
-Your cognitive map will be easier to judge and more accurate if you acquire spatial information from a physical map that is oriented in the same direction that you are facing in your cognitive map.

cognitive maps represent 3 geographic attributes - shape, distance, relative position

• our cognitive maps are usually pretty accurate
• however, when mistakes are made they’re due to rational strategy - mistakes reflect a tendency to base our judgments on variables that are usually relevant. They also reflect a tendency to judge our environment as being more well organized and orderly than it really is.
  heuristic: general problem-solving strategy that usually produces a correct solution …but not always
• ppl often use heuristics when making judgements in cognitive maps + As a result, they tend to show systematic distortions in distance, shape, and relative position.

Question 9

Briefly describe the research on the three factors that have been shown to influence estimates of distance based on mental maps. Examine the map you drew for the previous question, and determine whether any of these three factors influenced your own cognitive map. How are the shapes in our cognitive maps affected?

Answer 9

people’s distance estimates are often distorted by factors such as:

(1) the number of intervening cities
when the cities were really 300 miles apart on this map, people estimated that they were only 280 miles apart when there were no intervening cities. In contrast, these target cities were estimated to be 350 miles apart with three intervening cities. Notice that this error is consistent with the concept of heuristics. If cities are randomly distributed throughout a region, two cities are usually closer together when there are no intervening cities between them. In contrast, two cities are likely to be further apart when there are three intervening cities

(2) category membership
- people tended to shift each location closer to other sites that belonged to the same category. For example, people typically remembered the courthouse as being close to the police station and other government buildings
- same thing occurs with large scale differences (category may be cities belonging to same country vs being across the border)
- border bias: people estimate that the distance between two specific locations is larger if they are on different sides of a geographic border, compared to two locations on the same side of that border.
- “same-category heuristic.” It’s generally a good strategy to guess that two cities are closer together if they are in the same state, rather than in adjacent states

(3) whether their destination is a landmark
- landmark effect: the general tendency to provide shorter estimates when traveling to a landmark—an important geographical location—rather than a nonlandmark
- Prominent destinations apparently seem closer than less-important destinations.

cognitive shapes
-ex. intersections of streets on maps
-the research shows a systematic distortion - we tend to construct cognitive maps in which the shapes are more regular than they are in reality.
-in one study, ppl regularized street intersections to be all at 90 deg angles in a city they’d lived for 5 years
-suggests that we employ a heuristic here (‘the 90 degree angle heuristic’)
-

Question 10

Describe the research of Barbara Tversky and her colleagues on the relative positions of geographical locations. What is the rotation heuristic? What is the alignment heuristic? How are they different?

Comment: The concept of a heuristic, or processing strategy, is pervasive in cognitive psychology. This concept is also dealt with in Chapter 12 when addressing decision-making. The idea of a heuristic can be understood by contrasting it with an algorithm, which is a processing strategy consisting of a sequence of steps that are guaranteed to produce the correct solution if followed carefully. Algorithms are accurate, but they often consume much time and effort. Heuristics sacrifice accuracy for speed. In other words, heuristics are generally faster than algorithms, but they are not as accurate as algorithms. Why would people prefer speed over accuracy? One suggested explanation is that we are “cognitive misers.” That is, as a general rule, we tend to conserve our resources and expend as little as possible in the pursuit of a goal because we have limited cognitive resources. Since algorithms require more cognitive resources than we can afford to spend, we therefore use heuristics to conserve resources.

Answer 10

Tversky

• we use heuristics when we represent relative positions in our mental maps, just like in real ones
• these heuristics involve 2 types of errors:
  1. We remember a slightly tilted geographic structure as being either more vertical or more horizontal than it really is (the rotation heuristic)
  2. We remember a series of geographic structures as being arranged in a straighter line than they really are (the alignment heuristic)

the rotation heuristic:

ex. we look at Cali on a map and rotate it in our head to make it slightly more vertical than it really is
- you then may conclude that Reno is west of San Deigo since you see all of cali as being west of Reno (see map for this ex to make more sense)
- -69% of the students at a Bay Area university showed evidence of the rotation heuristic
ex. you see all of Canada as being north of the US, even though there are some dips

the alignment heuristic:
we see geo locations as more lined up than they really are
ex. Rome is N of Philadelphia but we might think the opposite
78% judged Philadelphia to be north of Rome
-cities in Northern US vs Southern Europe so we assume Phillie is higher

the rotation heuristic requires rotating a singlecoastline, country, building, or other figure in a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion so that its border is oriented in a nearly vertical or a nearly horizontal direction. In contrast, the alignment heuristic requires lining up several separate countries, buildings, or other figures in a straight row. Both heuristics are similar, however, because they encourage us to construct cognitive maps that are more orderly and schematic than geographic reality.
-when our mental maps rely too strongly on these heuristics, we miss the important details that make each stimulus unique. When our top-down cognitive processes are too active, we fail to pay enough attention to bottom-up information. In fact, the angle at an intersection may really be 70 degrees.

Question 11

Summarize Franklin and Tversky’s (1990) research on how people construct mental representations through the use of verbal descriptions. What is the spatial framework model? What is the situated cognition approach?

Comment: As mentioned in the overview for this unit, mental models are an important concept in the domain of discourse processing or language processing. Whether we are listening to a description or reading a narrative text, a major linguistic task is to build a mental representation or mental model of the event in question. In the discourse area, mental models also include non-spatial information.

Answer 11

• cognitive maps help us represent the spatial aspects of our environment, but they’re not totally accurate
• we actively create a cognitive map that represents the relevant features of a scene, we combine information from separate statements and combine them to form one integrated cognitive map

study:

• presented verbal descriptions of 10 different scenes, such as a barn or a hotel lobby, for example, “You are at the Jefferson Plaza Hotel….”
• Each description mentioned five objects located in plausible positions in relation to the observer (i.e. above, below, in front, in back, to the left side)
• After the participants had read each description, they were instructed to imagine that they were turning around to face a different object. They were then asked to specify which object was located in each of several directions. (For example, which object is “above your head”?) In all cases, the researchers measured how long the participant took to respond to the question.
• Franklin and Tversky were especially interested in discovering whether response time depended upon the location of the object that was being tested.
• ppl could answer rapidly which object was above or below, but took longer for ahead/behind and longest time for R/L

then they proposed the spatial framework model, which says: emphasizes that the above-below spatial dimension is especially important in our thinking, the front-back dimension is moderately important, and the right-left dimension is least important

• the vertical dimension is most important because:
  1. its correlated with gravity, neither of the other two dimensions has this advantage. Gravity has an important asymmetric effect on the world we perceive; objects fall downward, not upward. Because of its association with gravity, the above-below dimension should be particularly important and thus particularly accessible. (Notice, then, that this asymmetry is “good,” because we make decisions more quickly.)
  2. The vertical dimension on an upright human’s body is physically asymmetric. That is, the top (head) and the bottom (feet) are very easy to tell apart, and so we do not confuse them with each other.
• we usually interact with objects in front of us more easily than with objects in back of us, introducing an asymmetry. Also, a human’s front half is not symmetric with the back half, again making it easy to distinguish between front and back. These two characteristics lead to judgment times for the front-back dimension that are fairly fast
• R/L we are pretty symmetrical. Most of us have a preference for one side (handedness).
• ppl make N/S decisions faster than E/W decisions on a physical map

situated cognition approach: we make use of helpful information in the immediate environment or situation. Therefore, our knowledge depends on the context that surrounds us. As a result, what we know depends on the situation that we are in.
-important when we create mental maps, form concepts, and solve problems (many cognitive tasks)