Mental Imagery Flashcards
What is the Duck rabbit image?
An ambiguous figure that shows the study of processing reversible figures. It tells us that people will always choose to process an actual image rather than imagine it.
Epiphenomenon
Mental experience that does not have any functional role in information processing
Mental Imagery
The processing of perceptual-like information in the absence of an external source for the perceptual information
Mental Rotation
The process of continuously transforming the orientation of a mental image. Roger Shepard made many experiments on that topic. Parietal region is active
Fusiform face area (FFA)
A part of the temporal cortex that is especially involved in fine discriminations, particularly of faces.
Parahippocampal place area (PPA)
A region adjacent to the hippocampus that is active when people are perceiving locations (i.e., indoor or outdoor scenes)
Cognitive Maps
Mental representations of the locations of objects and places in the environment.
Route map
A representation of the environment consisting of the paths between locations but without spatial information. Contrast with survey map.
Egocentric Representation
A representation of the environment as it appears to the perception of an observer. Contrast with allocentric representation
Survey map
A representation of the environment consisting of the position of locations in space. Contrast with route map
Allocentric Representation
A representation of the environment according to a fixed coordinate system, as on a map. Contrast with egocentric representation.
Verbal Imagery versus Visual Imagery (Santa’s Experiment 1977)
Santa’s 1977 experiment showed that mental images preserve spatial relationships. Participants studied three geometric shapes in a specific arrangement and later compared test arrays to the original. Santa predicted faster responses when the arrangement matched. The results confirmed this, as participants responded more quickly when the spatial configuration was unchanged.
Blazhenkova & Kozhevnikov (2009) arguments
Imagery ability divides into spatial (brain’s “where” pathway) and object-oriented (brain’s “what” pathway). These abilities are inversely related: strong spatial skills often mean weaker object visualization, and vice versa. Art students excel in object imagery but score lower on spatial tasks, while science students show the opposite pattern.
The Foo, Warren, Duchon, and Tarr (2005) experiment to see how landmarks affect cognitive maps
In a “desert” condition without landmarks, participants couldn’t navigate between two locations because they hadn’t formed a route map.
In a “forest” condition with landmarks (trees), participants formed survey maps and could easily navigate between locations.
State the areas in the brain supporting imagery of spatial information and imagery of objects and their visual properties
Parietal structures support imagery of spatial information and temporal structures support imagery of objects and their visual properties.
Explain Brook’s results of the dual-task interference experiment
The experiment showed that when tasks tap into the same cognitive resources (e.g., both spatial or both verbal), performance deteriorates due to interference. However, when tasks rely on different cognitive systems (e.g., spatial task with verbal response), interference is minimized
Map distortion, Stevens and Coupe (1978)
When people have to reason about the relative position of two locations, they will often reason in terms of the relative positions of larger areas that contain these two locations
(example Copenhagen and Gothenburg)
Mental comparasion of magnitude
Moyer (1973) - tell from memory a difference in size between animals. Reaction time faster when the difference is bigger
What does TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation) directed to the primary visual cortex do according to Kosslyn’s experiment (1999)?
It showed that people were slower in making imagery judgements after receiving TMS to the primary visual cortex
Hartley, Maguire, Spiers, and Burgess (2003) used fMRI to determine which parts of the brain are active when route-following or way-following. What are they?
Route-following -> motor cortex and anterior regions
Way-following -> parietal cortex, regions for visual imagining, greater activation in hippocampus
Differences of imagining and perceiving places and faces in the brain: O’Craven and Kanwisher (2000)
The signal changes were not as strong when the place or face was imagined than when it was actually seen but it still applied to the FFA for faces and the PPA for places
