Chapter 10 - Visual Imagery Flashcards
What is mental imagery?
-you’re seeing something without an actual visual stimulus
Describe the image less thought debate. (2)
-Aristotle said we can’t have thought without being able to bring up imagery
-behaviourists said imagery helps for thought, but you do not need it
What did people believe during the cognitive revolution?
-thought exists without imagery, however imagery facilitates cognitive processes
Describe the study by Paivio briefly. What did it suggest? (2)
-got people to do a paired-associate learning task with concrete nouns (boat and tree) and abstract nouns (justice and belief) ending with four different pairings of words
-research suggested that people recalled memory better when two concrete nouns paired and lowest memory with two abstract pairs and came up with the conceptual peg hypothesis
What is the conceptual peg hypothesis?
-concrete nouns create images that other words can “hang onto” (peg) like a tree in a boat
Paivio suggested that we have two distinct coding systems. What are they?
-verbal and imagery
What systems do concrete nouns use according to Paivio?
-verbal labels and visual images
What systems do abstract words use according to Paivio?
-just verbal labels
What are image codes? Example? (2)
-represent information in a visual or pictorial form and are analog representations (capture details similar to how we perceive them in the real world)
-visualizing a map of a city
What are symbolic codes? Example? (2)
-verbal or symbolic form that are abstract representations (rely on learned conventions like language)
-thinking about the word dog to represent the concept of a dog
What does it mean when we say two codes are linked (symbolic and image codes)?
-when both verbal and visual information are combined they create dual codes that strengthen memory
What is easier to remember: symbolic codes or image codes?
-image codes
It is easier to remember words (symbolic codes) in _______.
-sequence
What did Kosslyn do and what did it suggest?
-had people mentally scan across a map and found that it took longer to scan when they had to scan a greater distance
-concluded visual imagery is spatial
Pylyshyn started the imagery debate. What is this debate? (2)
-is imagery based on spatial mechanisms or language mechanisms
-like a check engine light isn’t the actual issue, it is what it represents it is an epiphenomenon
Kossyln said that imagery involves spatial or ______ representations.
-depictive
Pylyshyn said that Kosslyn’s results can be explained by using real world knowledge unconsciously which is also called ______ knowledge. Give an example.
-tacit
-instead of participants seeing a mental images and scanning it like a picture, Pylyshyn claimed they might simply be reasoning: if the object is farther away in real life it should take me longer to imagine travelling to it
Pylyshyn said that the underlying mechanism of imagery is _______. (2)
-propositional
-people store information abstractly as meaning, not mental images and if they reconstruct images this is based off of the proposition
What is aphantasia?
-inability to form imagery (not considered a disability, condition or disorder)
Describe how the viewing distance affects our reaction time for imagining an elephant vs a rabbit.
-think about elephant vs. Rabbit, rabbit is much smaller and when asked for details on rabbit they are given slower
-suggests mental images are spatial, like what Kosslyn said
Briefly describe Perky’s experiment.
-would ask them to visualize a banana and then would very lightly project a banana onto a screen
-participants mistook their imagery for the actual image
Farrah repeated Perky’s experiment. Briefly describe this.
-flashed a H or T and then asked if they saw it on the first or second screen
-if the letter that was flashed was different that the other letter they were asked about they were less accurate with identifying which slide they appeared on
What did Kreiman’s research show about imagery and perception?
-the same neuron would fire equally for imagery and perception, but not for faces
Describe what two areas activated for both perception and imagery?
-frontal lobe
-further back behind the frontal lobe
