Mental Imagery

Question 1

What is mental imagery?

Answer 1

• allows us to anticipate how things will look in the future or from alternative perspectives
  
  • giving/recieving directions
  • reaaranging furniture
• can happen with all senses
• vision and hearing have received the most attention in research

Question 2

Mental Rotation expt

Answer 2

• normal or reversed angle of F or R (angle of increments 4 degrees)
• DV= reaction time for correct responses
• the more the angle is away from 0 the more time we need to process it back to zero
• symmetric letters won’t work for the experiment

Question 3

Mental rotation #2

Answer 3

• stimuli= pairs of tetris like objects
• angular dispairity between objects
• task- are they identical or different?
• DV= RT for correct “identical traits”

Question 4

MR conclusions

Answer 4

• Ps report mentally rotating objects in their mind
• mental rotation is analogous to physical rotation

Question 5

Mental Scanning with Maps

Answer 5

• Ps studied map of island until they memorized landmarks and physical location
• map removed from sight
• task- Ps asked to focus on a landmark and to describe characteristics
• engage in mental imagery to answer
• the time taken to answer questions about the 2nd landmark was positively correlated with its distance from the first
• people mentally travel from 1 to 2

Question 6

fMRI and mental imagery

Answer 6

• parietal acivation during mental rotation
• locating an object in space
• temporal activation when imagining an object’s properties

Question 7

Temporal FFA/PPA

Answer 7

• perception trials= Ps viewed pics of famous faces or familiar places
• imagery trials= Ps heard names of famous faces/ places and instructed to form vivis mental image
• FFA= more facial activation
• PP= more location activation
• weaker activation of imagining vs percieving