W7: Visual Knowledge

Question 1

Kosslyn’s (1976) Experiment & Results

Answer 1

Experiment:

Results:

Question 2

Disrupting the visual system

Answer 2

If TMS or brain damage disrupts the visual system,

Question 3

Kosslyn’s (1976) Experiment & Results

Answer 3

Experiment: what sort of info do people include in their mental images? Participants either formed a mental image of a cat or just thought about cats. RT timed for questions like “do cats have … (claws)?”

Results:
Mental image - prominent features faster (eg. “head”)
Think about - “claws” faster

Results suggest that the info readily available to you depends on how you’re thinking about that object - visually imagining it or not.

Question 4

Shepard et al’s (1971) Experiment

Answer 4

Experiment: mental rotation task
Pairs of objects were shown where people had to say whether they matched or not - but one image had to be mentally rotated to compare.

Results: corresponding times
Shepard et al found there’s a linear relationship between the time it takes for people to say “same” for the two objects and the amount to which they had to rotate one of those objects.

Thus, imagined movement corresponds with actual movement. Rotation distance = time taken

Question 5

Demand Character

Answer 5

Picking up on certain cues/ signals that tell participants how they ought to behave or what the experimenter want to see.

Question 6

Relationship between imagining and perceiving

Answer 6

Processes involved with visualizing and perceiving are very similar, thus, they cannot be done at the same time.

Question 7

Segal and Fusella’s (1970, 1971) Experiment

Answer 7

Experiment: overlap between visual images vs perception of objects

Results suggest that you cannot mentally visualize something and see something in front of you at the same time. There’s interference due to the overlap and processing between these two tasks. it suggests that the processes involved with visualizing and perceiving are very similar.

Question 8

Spatial Imagery vs Visual Imagery

Answer 8

Two types of imagery which are distinct. There is evidence they come from different sources via (1) people blind since birth (2) brain scans.

The blind can perform tasks that involve spatial memory (eg. body or motion imagery) but have no visual imagery. Instead of looking at 2D paper, they can do mental rotation tasks with physical 3D shapes or judge distances using tactile maps.

Question 9

Kosslyn’s (1978) Experiment & Results

Answer 9

Experiment: mental travel time
Participants asked to memorize a fictional map which was then taken away, and they had to form a mental image of it. They were asked to imagine a dot moving between different locations, and push a button when the dot reached x location.

Results: corresponding times
Kosslyn et al found that the distances on the map influenced the time it took for the imaginary dot to travel.

Question 10

Spatial Imagery vs Visual Imagery

Answer 10

Two types of imagery which are distinct.

Visual imagery is associated with how things look, while spatial imagery is associated with an abstract form or arrangement.

Question 11

Evidence for two types of imagery

Answer 11

Visual imagery and spatial imagery are distinct.

There is evidence they come from different sources via (1) people blind since birth (2) brain scans.

The blind can perform tasks that involve spatial memory (eg. body or motion imagery) but have no visual imagery. Instead of looking at 2D paper, they can do mental rotation tasks with physical 3D shapes or judge distances using tactile maps.

Brain scans reveal different areas are activated for visual and spatial imagery. Damage to one system does not affect performance of the other system.

Question 12

Visual images vs Pictures

Answer 12

Mental images aren’t just pictures in our heads; mental images do not behave like pictures.

Example: ambiguous images (eg. Neckers cube, duck-rabbit illusion) don’t tell you which interpretation to use. Research shows that people struggle to switch between duck-rabbit when holding a mental image of the illustration - the image is not ambiguous anymore, not neutral; it is EITHER a duck or a rabbit, there is only one interpretation.

This means that the image is organised in our mind as either the duck OR rabbit, and that image is quite resistant to re-interpretation. That’s the main difference between pictures and mental images.

Question 13

Image storage in memory

Answer 13

WM: Held in visuospatial sketchpad
LTM: Comes from image files

Question 14

Image formation in remembering

Answer 14

We do not store complete pictures in our LTM, but actually need to create the image from pieces of stored. This info comes from “image files: we’ve got one file that contains a set of instructions about how to create a particular image.

Question 15

Two-step procedure showing imagery helps memory (Pavio’s experiments)

Answer 15

Words that were easier to imagine were also easier to remember.

Church, elephant = easier to remember
Context, virtue = harder to remember

Question 16

Why imagery improves memory

Answer 16

Imagery seems to improve memory for two reasons:

(1) the organisation of the info that needs to be remembered, and
(2) due to dual-coding; when a highly imaginable word is presented, you probably store them in two ways some sort of image representation along with a verbal label.

Question 17

Visuospatial sketchpad

Answer 17

This is where you hold images you’re actively working on (in WM).

Question 18

Boundary Extension

Answer 18

When people daw images later, it seems like they’ve taken a step back from the scene and they are able to include more of the scene in their drawing - they extend the boundaries of what they can see.

Why? People’s schema places the picture in a larger context and that leads people to having expectations about what else might be around the edges of the scene. Thus, schemas affect memory for pictures in quite a similar way to memory for verbal materials

Question 19

Image memory vs other content memory

Answer 19

Memory for images and pictures is very similar to memory for other types of information. This suggests that there’s just one overall memory system that we have and it contains all different types of information.

Question 20

Similarities between pictures and words

Answer 20

Six main similarities: Rehearsal, primacy and recency effects, source monitoring and familiarity, recall dependent on memory connections, encoding specificity, influence of schema

Question 21

Participants are asked to perform an imagery task while simultaneously keeping track of a
visual target (a light that varies in brightness). The visual task will...

Answer 21

disrupt the imagery task if it requires visual imagery but not if the task can be done with spatial imagery

Question 22

Image File

Answer 22

Refers to descriptive information in long-term memory used as the basis for creating an active image

Question 23

Two mneumonics that use visual imagery to improve memory

Answer 23

Peg Word System, Method of Loci

Question 24

Peg Word System

Answer 24

Hanging words you’re trying to remember onto “peg words” you’ve previously memorised.