Imagery Flashcards
(88 cards)
1
Q
What is mental imagery?
A
- our ability to mentally recreate perceptual experience in the absence of a sensory stimulus
- perception without sensation
- can create mental images of stimuli that you’ve never experienced
2
Q
What is dual coding theory?
A
- human knowledge is represented in two separate systems
- non verbal vs verbal
3
Q
What is the non verbal system?
A
- modality specific system
- based on sensory motor information
- image system
- images resemble what they stand for
- analog representation
- maintain perceptual features of the stimulus they represent
4
Q
What is the verbal system?
A
- symbolic system
- abstract
- language system
- information does not resemble what it stands for
- abstract codes
5
Q
What is depictive representation?
A
- non verbal representation
- analog representation
- depictive
- modal
- representations which maintain perceptual features of a stimulus
- like a photo
6
Q
What is descriptive representation?
A
- abstract code
- verbal representation
- propositional representation
- descriptive
- amodal (non sensory)
- representations which have no direct connection to the features of a stimulus
- like a computer code
7
Q
What is the imagery debate?
A
- we know that people experience mental images and there are many ways that imagery influences cognition
- the debate is what format or code does imagery take in our minds (depictive or descriptive)
8
Q
Who is Kosslyn?
A
- argues images are depictive representations
- analog codes that maintain perceptual and spatial characteristics of objects
- preserve perceptual and spatial information
- when you do mental imagery, you’re bringing the representation to mind
9
Q
Who is Pylyshyn?
A
- argues images are descriptive representations
- symbolic codes that convey abstract conceptual information, do not resemble the real world
- does not preserve perceptual and spatial information
- images as epiphenomenon: when you do mental imagery you hallucinate images as an effect of accessing the information
- Argues that knowledge is represented propositionally, via the manipulating of cognitive symbols
- Argues propositional codes are the only requirement for thought
- propositions: Can be verified as true or false and Can be used to describe relationships between items
10
Q
What is an epiphenomenon?
A
- a mere by product of a process that has no effect on the process itself
11
Q
Do people process mental images in the same way they process real stimuli?
A
- If images are depictive (maintain perceptual and spatial characteristics), then people should process images and physical stimuli similarly
- if images descriptive, then mental processing would depend on the number of propositions instead of perceptual & spatial characteristics of stimuli
12
Q
What is mental scanning?
A
- Kosslyn
- It should take more time to travel longer physical distances than shorter ones
- It should take longer to process larger mental distances than shorter distances
- Visualize one landmark…scan the
mental image until you have ‘arrived’ at
the target landmark - The time it took to mentally travel
across landmarks increased with the
“distance” - “Distance” between landmarks varied,
but number of propositional properties
between landmarks remained constant - Evidence for depictive representation
13
Q
What is the evidence for depictive representation?
A
- mental scanning
- mental rotation
- mental scaling
14
Q
What is mental rotation?
A
- Shepard and Metzler
- Investigated the time it took for individuals to rotate mental images of abstract figures
- If mental rotation is similar to the rotation of real objects, then it will take individuals longer to mentally rotate a greater angular distance compared to a smaller angular distance
- Results demonstrated a linear relationship between amount of rotation of one of the shapes and reaction time for participants to identify whether the shapes were the same or different
- Evidence for depictive representation
15
Q
What is mental scaling?
A
- Kosslyn
- When things get closer to you, they appear physically bigger until they fill your entire visual field
- Participants imagined animals standing next to an elephant or a fly
- Asked questions about the intermediary animal (e.g., does this cat have claws)
- Participants answered slower when the intermediary animal was paired with the elephant because they needed to mentally “zoom in”
- Then replicated with “elephant-sized fly” and “fly sized elephant”
- Evidence for depictive representation
16
Q
What is the relationship between imagery and perception?
A
- Perky
-Segal & Fusella - Farah
- Motion aftereffects (Winawer)
17
Q
What did Perky find about imagery and perception?
A
- If imagery is perception without sensation, then it follows that imagery and perception should use similar cognitive mechanisms
- Imagine and describe lemon
- Simultaneously participants were shown a very dim image of the same item
- Participant mental images matched features of the projection
- they reported not consciously perceiving the image
- Evidence that imagery and perception utilize similar cognitive systems
18
Q
What did Segal & Fusella find about imagery and perception?
A
- Evidence for shared perception and mental imagery system from interference
- Indicate what stimulus was presented (arrow, music note or nothing) while either imagining a tree or telephone ringing
- Visual and auditory stimuli were presented at a very low intensity, making detection difficult
- Detection rates for the visual stimulus were lower when imagining a tree
- Detection rates for the auditory stimulus were lower when imagining a phone ring
- If imagery uses the same mechanisms as perception, imagining a visual stimulus would ‘use up’ resources, decreasing detection
- Evidence that imagery and perception utilize similar cognitive systems
19
Q
What did Farah find about imagery and perception?
A
- Imagery can also facilitate perception
- Participants shown faint T or H
- “Create a visual image of T or H while detecting the projected letter.”
- Presenting congruent stimuli enhanced detection performance
- Evidence that imagery and perception utilize similar cognitive systems
20
Q
What are motion aftereffects?
A
- result when sensory stimulation leads to perceptual overcompensation leading to the illusion motion in the opposite direction
- Winawer demonstrated that mental imagery can create similar perceptual illusions
- Participants “imagined motion in a single direction” for 60 seconds
- This suggests that mental imagery activated the same visual processing neurons
21
Q
What is the evidence against depictive representation?
A
- Reed
- Experimenter expectancy
- Demand Characteristics
22
Q
What did Reed find against depictive representation?
A
- If mental images are depictive, they should easily be able to indicate if new shapes were part of the original from memory
- In some cases, participants were able to accurately determine if shapes were new or part of the original image
- But in other cases, accuracy was quite low
- Results could be explained if participants were giving verbal labels to objects, instead of storing spatial characteristics
23
Q
What is experimenter expectancy?
A
- Researchers inadvertently convey the anticipated results of the experiment to participants, altering behaviour
- Experimenter expectations can influence participant responses (Intons-Peterson)
24
Q
What are demand characteristics?
A
- Participants form an interpretation of the researcher’s purpose and subconsciously change their behaviour
25
What is the evidence from patients with brain damage?
- Patient TC
- Patient PB
- Madame D
- Neuroimaging
26
Who is patient TC?
- Experienced cardiac arrest after a car accident
- Had damage to the occipital & temporal lobes
- Suffered from cortical blindness
- Both the occipital and temporal lobes are important for visual perception
- Unable to distinguish light from
- Lack of head movements and blinking when observing objects in motion
- Loss of conscious vision was associated with loss of mental imagery
- Could not provide visual descriptions of familiar places, tasks or objects
- TC demonstrated deficits in both perception and imagery abilities
27
Who is patient PB?
- Experienced a stroke
- Had damage to the occipital lobe
- Suffered from cortical blindness
- PB was able to perform visual imagery tasks
28
Who is Madame D?
- Experienced multiple strokes
- Had damage to occipital & temporal lobes
- Maintain some visual ability, suffered color blindness
- Could copy drawings but was not able to read or recognize objects or faces
- Madame D was able to perform mental imagery tasks
- Lost perception
- If she could not recognize an object at her home, she would visualize it to help her identify items
- Imagery facilitated perception
29
Two patients sustained a closed-head
injury.
- There are also cases of individuals who lose mental imagery abilities but maintained perceptual abilities.
- Could not produce mental images
- Neither could draw animals or objects from memory
- Tested normally on: visual perception, memory, language
30
What are the limits to neuropsychology?
- Generalized function loss
- Difficulty with instructions
- Damage to fibers of passage
31
What is the evidence from neuroimaging?
- Neuroimaging results tend to support shared mechanisms between perception and imagery, although they are not exactly the same
- Kosslyn
- O’Craven & Kanwisher
- Ganis et al
32
What evidence did Kosslyn find from neuroimaging?
- Recorded cell activity in the primary visual cortex (V1)
- Participants memorized pictures of black and white stripes
- Answered questions about the lines by visualizing the drawings
- Demonstrated that viewing and imagining the stripes both activated V1 (PET), and that disrupting they were less accurate when V1 cells were disrupted (TMS)
- Showed causality
33
What evidence did O’Craven & Kanwisher find from neuroimaging?
- Imagery and perception activate the same specialized areas of the brain
- Participants were shown famous faces and familiar buildings while in an fMRI machine
- FFA showed greater activity when viewing and imagining faces
- PPA showed greater activity when viewing and imagining buildings
- Could determine if someone was viewing a face or building from brain activity
- Suggests shared areas of perception and imagery
34
What evidence did Ganis et al find from neuroimaging?
- Re-examining brain activity in imagery and perception with newer techniques
- Perception: higher-level brain areas (PFC) send top-down signals to perceptual processing areas
- Imagery: a re-enacted perceptual experience where the same neurons are activated by frontal brain areas instead of a stimulus
- Brain areas involved in planning, cognitive control, attention, and memory showed the most similarity in visual perception and imagery tasks (front of brain)
- There was limited similarity in in activity in V1 for the same tasks...this makes sense considering no visual stimulus is present during imagery tasks
35
What do most researchers agree on?
Imagery is a combination of depictive and abstract proposition and arises from similar brain mechanisms as perception
36
How is imagery beneficial to memory
- Memory is better when items are stored as pictures compared to words
- This is especially true for interactive images
- Produced an outcome called the Picture Superiority Effect
37
What was Paivio & Csapo's experiment on imagery and memory?
- Read words or to say the name of a picture out loud (verbal condition), or Imagine a visual image of the words and pictures (imagery condition
- Image memory was better than word memory
38
What is the relationship between dual coding theory and the picture superiority effect?
- When we see a picture, we automatically create a visual representation and give it a verbal label
- When we read a word, we only generate the verbal label
- Image-based memory uses two codes (images and labels) instead of one (just labels)
39
What is the concreteness effect?
- Concrete words are remembered better than abstract words
- concrete words: Easier to imagine, more likely to spontaneously create visual images
- abstract words: Harder to visualize, so we rely only on one verbal code (labels)
40
What was Parker & Dagnall's experiment on the concreteness effect?
- Participants listened to a list of abstract and concrete words...told they would need to remember them later
- 1⁄2 of the participants looked at a screen with a static visual noise display
- 1/2 of the participants viewed a dynamic visual noise display (DVN), which is a stimulus known to interfere with the ability to create mental images
- Tested their memory of the words
- The Concreteness Effect emerged, but only for participants watching the static visual noise display. The DVN group performed equally as well on concrete and abstract words
41
What is the relationship between imagery and mental health?
- Holmes et al
- imagery and PTSD
- anxiety, depression and imagery
42
What is the Holmes et al experiment about imagery and mental health?
- Participants listened to short descriptions of possible events with positive and negative outcomes
- Imagery group: Imagine visual images of the scenario
- Meaning group: Focus on the meaning of the words
- Imagery group had higher rates of anxiety
43
What is the relationship between imagery and PTSD?
- Negative intrusive imagery is a characteristic trait of individuals with PTSD
- Re-experiencing traumatic events involving involuntary and unwanted memories
- People will respond as if they are re-experiencing the event
- Changes to the autonomic nervous system
- Increased heart rate and sweating
- Re-enacting behaviors
- People with more vivid imagery are more likely to experience intrusive images after negative events
44
What is the relationship between imagery and anxiety disorders?
- Intense, persistent, and excessive worrying that interferes with daily life (Generalized/Social Anxiety and phobias)
- Associated with an increase of negative imagery of future events, which they believe can happen, exacerbating anxiety
45
What is the relationship between imagery and depressive disorders?
- Persistent feelings of sadness, frequently accompanied by a loss of interest
- Associated with an increase of negative imagery, specifically suicidal ideation
- Also associated with a decrease in positive imagery
46
How can imagery be used to treat PTSD, anxiety and depression?
- Imagery Rescripting
46
What is Imagery Rescripting?
- A technique to help treat mental disorders linked to abnormal mental imagery
- Patients are guided through memories of past negative events
- Instructed to imagine themselves acting the way they wish they could have during the event
- Goal: replace negative memories with positive ones
- Imagery rescripting has successfully been used to treat mental heath disorders
- Treatments that focus on imagery have the highest success rate of treating PTSD
47
How do we measure mental imagery?
- self report
- Objective Performance Tasks
48
What are self reports?
- Asking people to write or explain their imagery experiences
- Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (Marks, 1973; 1-5 Likert Scale assessing vividness of imagery; testing object imagery)
49
What are Objective Performance Tasks?
- Paper Folding Test (Ekstrom et al., 1976): Participants view diagrams of paper being folded and hold punched
- Participants must ‘mentally unfold’ the paper and identify the placement of the holes (testing spatial ability)
50
What is aphantasia?
- Some people cannot form mental images at all
- Patient MX
- Those with aphantasia are more likely to become mathematicians and scientists
51
Who is patient MX?
- Claimed to have lost all ability to form mental images following heart surgery
- Scored as low as possible on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire
- fMRI showed his visual cortex and fusiform gyrus were inhibited
- After learning of MX others reported that they had never been able to use visual imagery
- Described their experience as “the shape of an apple if you felt it in your hands in the dark” and “thinking only in radio
- The condition became known as Congenital Aphantasia and affects 1-3% of the population
52
What is hyperphantasia?
- Those who experience extremely vivid visual imagery
- Although little is known about this population, and it is likely much rarer
- Those with hyperaphantasia are more likely to occupy a creative procession
53
Which of the examples below does NOT require mental imagery?
a. remembering the sour taste of a lemon
b. knowing multiplication tables from memory
c. thinking of the sound of the ocean
d. remembering the pain you feel when you stub your toe
b
54
Which of the following ideas proposed that thought can be represented as words or images?
a. the imagery debate
b. analog codes
c. dual coding theory
d. abstract codes
c
55
Which of the following is the best example of an analog code?
a. the word stop
b. a red traffic light
c. a stop sign
d. a "walking person" walk signal at an intersection
d
56
Which of the following questions does the imagery debate address?
a. Are images a primary way we use to store knowledge?
b. Can images influence cognitive processing?
c. Can humans experience imagery?
d. Is imagery the only way we understand the world?
a
57
What is a proposition?
- a type of analog code that maintains the perceptual and spatial characteristics of physical objects
58
Consider the sentence "We went to the park on Saturday but it rained all afternoon." Select all of the information below that might be included in a depictive representation of that sentence but not a descriptive representation of the same sentence.
a. knowledge about who "we" are
b. information about what items are in the park
c. knowing that it rained on Saturday
d. knowledge about what it feels like to get rained on
e. knowing that the event did not take place in the morning
f. a sense of what the sky looked like on Saturday afternoon
b, d and f
59
Which of the following results best describes the results of mental scanning experiments?
a. There is a positive linear relationship between scanning time and distance on the image
b. There is a negative linear relationship between scanning time and distance on the image
c. There is a constant scanning time for all locations on an image
d. Imagery does not represent spatial relations in the same way perceptual information does
a
60
Which of the following is true about Kosslyn's image scaling experiment?
a. When imaging an elephant and a mouse, participants were slower to respond to questions about mice
b. When imaging a mouse and a fly, participants were slower to respond to questions about mice
c. When imaging an elephant-sized mouse and a mouse-sized elephant, participants were faster to respond to questions about elephants
d. Participants responded faster to questions about elephant-sized mice than to elephant-sized elephants
a
61
In Perky's (1910) classic experiment, participants believed they were imagining a stimulus when, in fact, they were perceiving a very weak stimulus. What is this an example of?
a. interference of imagery on perception
b. interference of perception on imagery
c. an interaction between imagery and perception
d. facilitation of perception by imagery
c
62
What evidence was used to support interference of perception by imagery?
a. Participants' ability to detect a visual stimulus increased when imagining a visual image and stayed the same when imagining an auditory image
b. Participants' ability to detect a visual stimulus stayed the same when imagining a visual image and decreased when imagining an auditory image
c. Participants' ability to detect a visual stimulus decreased when imagining a visual image and stayed the same when imagining an auditory image
d. Participants' ability to detect a visual stimulus increased when imagining a visual image and decreased when imagining an auditory image
c
63
Review Video 10.3 above to answer the following question: Which of the following examples is similar to finding evidence that imagery is not depictive?
a. seeing Santa Claus at the mall
b. finding a black swan
c. discovering that your childhood experiences influence your personality
d. discovering that mental rotation takes a similar amount of time as physical rotation
b
64
Reed (1974) discovered that participants could perform similarly on perception tasks and imagery tasks only some of the time. What did Reed rely on to refute depictive representations?
a. reaction time
b. interference
c. verbal labels
d. falsification
d
65
Intons-Peterson demonstrated that participants' reaction times were influenced by what the research assistants were told to expect. What is this an example of?
a. experimenter expectancy
b. experimenter bias
c. falsification
d. participant demands
a
66
Imagine you conduct an experiment to investigate people's access to their knowledge about the details of familiar landmarks. You ask participants to report how many windows they have in their home and how many windows there are in their college library from memory. If images are indeed depictive representations, what would you expect to find and why?
a. It would take participants longer to answer about the windows in the library because it is bigger than a house
b. It would take participants longer to answer about the windows in the library because they are more familiar with their homes than the library
c. It would take participants the same amount of time to respond to both questions because the number of windows is stored as abstract knowledge
d. It would take participants the same amount of time to respond to both questions because physical details about the buildings are irrelevant to gaining facts about them
a
67
In Shepard and Metzler's mental rotation experiment, participants' reaction time to decide if the two presented shapes were the same or different increased linearly as the angle of rotation increased. This pattern of results supports Kosslyn's idea that mental images are depictive representations.
What pattern of results would support a propositional account?
a. Reaction time would decrease linearly with increasing angle of rotation
b. Reaction time would be the same for all angles of rotation
c. Reaction time would be faster for same trials than different trials
d. Reaction time would plateau at 90 degrees of rotation
b
68
What evidence indicates a patient has intact perception but impaired imagery?
a. the ability to copy drawings but an inability to draw common objects from memory
b. the ability to draw common objects from memory but an inability to copy objects
c. an inability to copy drawings or recognize objects visually
d. an inability to name common objects when presented visually but an intact ability to copy drawings
a
69
What did Kosslyn's experiment in which transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) was applied to the visual cortex during imagery tasks suggest about V1?
a. that V1 supports propositional representations
b. that imagery is an epiphenomenon
c. that V1 causally supports perception and imagery
d. that V1 mediates an interaction between perception and imagery
c
70
How can the activity in FFA be described when viewing pictures of faces compared to imagining those same faces?
a. smaller
b. larger
c. about the same
d. depends on the particular stimuli
b
71
Reya is asked to study a list of words and recall them afterwards. She ends up having an easier time remembering the word set “bear, pencil, potato, juice” than the word set “love, infinity, eager, kindness.” What does this illustrate?
a. interactive imagery
b. auditory imagery
c. picture superiority effect
d. the concreteness effect
d
72
According to Paivio, why are concrete words easier to remember than abstract words?
a. because concrete words use one code, whereas abstract words use two codes
b. because concrete words use two codes, whereas abstract words use one code
c. because concrete words use a simple code, whereas abstract words use a complex code
d. because concrete words use a single type of code, whereas abstract words use many different types of codes
b
73
What type of assessment is the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire and what is it used to measure?
a. It is a self-report questionnaire used to measure spatial ability
b. It is a performance test used to measure spatial ability
c. It is a self-report questionnaire used to measure object imagery
d. It is a performance test used to measure object imagery
c
74
True or False: All mental imagery is visual in nature
False
75
Which of the following statements best describes words that are onomatopoeias?
a. Onomatopoeias for the same sound are never different in different languages
b. Onomatopoeias for the same sound are always different in different languages
c. Onomatopoeias for the same sound are sometimes very different in different languages
d. We cannot compare onomatopoeias across languages because our perceptions of sounds are too different
c
76
Which of the following is NOT a proposition?
a. The sun is shining
b. He tripped on the carpet
c. She was mean
d. The stinky cheese
d
77
In Kosslyn's (1973) mental scanning experiment, he used images of items, such as flowers, to see if representations maintain their spatial characteristics. He found that the farther away participants had to shift their attention, the longer it took to process. There are two theories that correctly made these predictions about reaction time. Which of the following are the correct theories?
a. propositional representation; linguistic representation theory
b. the propositional representation theory (this was the only one)
c. depictive representation; propositional representation
d. depictive representation; linguistic representation theory
c
78
Perky (1910) asked participants to create visual images of everyday items while she projected very dim pictures of those same items on a screen in front of participants. What did Perky find?
a. Their images matched the pictures projected even though they had no idea they were being projected
b. You could argue that their images were somewhat similar to the images being projected
c. Their images matched the pictures projected because they were aware of what was being projected
d. Their images did not match the pictures projected because they were not aware they were being projected
a
79
Which of the following is the principle in science in which theories are tested in order to prove they are false, and not tested to search for evidence that supports them?
a. experimenter expectancy
b. falsification
c. false characteristics
d. concreteness effect
b
80
Which of the following describes the experimenter expectancy effect?
a. There were subtle cues in the instructions to an experiment that biased a participant's behavior
b. The experimenter used more concrete words than abstract words, which made memory better in some conditions and not others
c. An experimenter unconsciously made a facial expression that caused participants to unconsciously behave according to the experimenter's expectations
d. The experimenter had the ability to know what the participants were thinking without having to survey them
c
81
Experiments such as the ones run by Pylyshyn (2002) and Intons-Peterson (1983) call into question the results of which of the following?
a. descriptive representations
b. depictive representations
c. epiphenomena
d. proposition representations
b
82
Adina had a stroke localized in her occipital cortex and lost her conscious visual perception. What can we conclude?
a. We cannot conclude what is involved because the damage was caused by a stroke
b. The occipital cortex is involved in the function of conscious visual perception
c. The occipital cortex is not involved in the function of any visual processing
d. This cannot be true. The researchers should double check the location of the stroke
b
83
O’Craven and Kanwisher (2000) used fMRI to measure brain activity while showing participants pictures of faces and buildings and asking them to imagine those same faces and buildings. What was one interesting finding?
a. When activity in the temporal lobe is low that means the person is imagining a face and not a building
b. Brain activity in FFA and PPA was greater during the imagery tasks than the visual tasks
c. When the frontal lobe is disrupted by TMS you cannot imagine faces but you can imagine buildings
d. Brain activity in FFA and PPA was greater during the visual tasks than the imagery tasks
d
84
When Jordan is studying, he finds information easier to remember when he imagines interactive images of the content he needs to learn. Also, he is always inspecting the images in the text and finding videos online to help him learn the material. Jordan must know about what effect?
a. the imagery superiority effect
b. the memory superiority effect
c. the concreteness effect
d. the picture superiority effect
d
85
Which of the following is an effect in which memory is better for concrete words than abstract words?
a. the concreteness effect
b. the picture superiority effect
c. the word superiority effect
d. the word concrete effect
a
86
In order to investigate the concreteness effect, Parker and Dagnall (2009) had participants try to remember both abstract and concrete words while viewing either static visual noise or dynamic visual noise. What did they find?
a. Dynamic visual noise was not successful in preventing mental visual images so the concreteness effect was not challenged
b. Interfering with the ability to create visual images removed the benefit to abstract words over concrete words
c. Interfering with the ability to create visual images was unsuccessful in removing the benefit to concrete words
d. Interfering with the ability to create visual images removed the benefit to concrete words over abstract words
d
87
If you were asked to mentally unfold a piece of paper with a hole in it to determine where the holes would be located in the unfolded paper, what test would you be taking?
a. paper plane test
b. paper folding test
c. mental folding test
d. mental imagery test
b
