Lecture 7

Question 1

Mental imagery

Answer 1

Mental representation of stimuli when those stimuli are not present
-a top down process
—sensory receptors do not receive input
-knowledge driven
—uses info stored in LTM to create internal images

Question 2

How do we study it?

Answer 2

-mental images resemble physical objects
—tf, people should make judgments about the image in the same way they make judgments about corresponding physical object

Question 3

Mental rotations

Answer 3

Imagining an object in motion and viewing it from different perspectives
-moderate to large gender differences

Question 4

Shepard and Metzler (1971)

Answer 4

-task in which you had to rotate 2D and 3D shapes to match the figure given
-found that large rotations take more time

Question 5

Gender differences

Answer 5

-some studies report no gender differences
—effects of instructions and training
-experience with toys and sports can emphasize spatial skills
-can be modified by providing girls with experience in spatial activities

Question 6

Cognitive maps

Answer 6

-mental representation of geographic info
-estimating distance between 2 known points can be distorted by
1. Number of intervening cities
2. Category membership
3. Landmarks

Question 7

Number of intervening cities

Answer 7

Thorndyke (1981)
-study map of region u til you can reproduce it
-0,1,2,3 etc. cities along route
-estimate distance between pair of cities
-number of intervening cities had influence on estimates

Question 8

Category membership

Answer 8

Hirtle and mascolo (1986)
-estimate distance between pair of locations
-people tended to ship location closer to other sites that belonged in same category
— ex. Government buildings
Mishra and Mishra (2010)
-border bias
-vacation home in Oregon or Washington
-when people hear about an earthquake they prefer to select a home in a. Different state
—rather than home equally close but in same state

Question 9

Landmark

Answer 9

-landmark effect
—tendency to provide shorter distance estimates when travelling to a landmark
—Mcnorma & Diwadker (1997)

Question 10

Synesthesia

Answer 10

-condition in which stimulus appropriate to one sense triggers experience appropriate to another sense
-inducer
—cue that elicits synesthetic experience
-concurrent
—the response
—can be concepts as well as precepts

Question 11

Eidetic imagery

Answer 11

Images projected onto external world that persist for a moment or two after stimulus picture is removed
-perceived as being “out there” instead of inside the head
-descriptions of eidetic image are faster than memory reports
-more common in children

Question 12

Cognitive dedifferentiation

Answer 12

-fusion of perceptual processs that typically function independently
—eidetic imagery is dedifferentiation of imagery and perception

Question 13

Dual coding theory

Answer 13

Two ways of representing events
1. Verbal
2. Non-verbal

Question 14

Concreteness

Answer 14

-degree to which a word refers to something that can be experienced by the senses
-body-object interaction
—ease with which human body can interact with a words referent
-emotions
—valence (pleasantness of stimulus)
—arousal (intensity provoked emotion)
—dominance (degree of control exerted by stimulus)

Question 15

Nature of mental imagery

Answer 15

-images are epiphenomenal
—by products of something else

Question 16

Propositional knowledge hypothesis

Answer 16

-knowledge about world is stored in memory in forms of propositions

Question 17

Aphantasia

Answer 17

-when a person does not experience mental imagery

Question 18

Imagery debate

Answer 18

-analog vs propositional code
-perception vs language

Question 19

Analog perspective

Answer 19

-mental images stored as an analog code
—create a mental image of object that closely resembles actual perceptual image on your retina
-responses to mental images are frequently similar to responses to physical objects
—people often fail to notice precise details when looking at an object
—tf, these details will also e missing from their mental images

Question 20

Propositional perspective

Answer 20

-mental images stored in an abstract language like form that does not physically resemble the original stimulus

Question 21

Mental rotation supports analog coding

Answer 21

-takes longer to perform large rotation than a small one
—activating visual properties of the objects
-propositional code would predict similar time for these conditions

Question 22

Embodied cognition

Answer 22

-role of cognition is to facilitate successful interactions with the environment
—genberg, 1997

Question 23

Start of David

Answer 23

Is there a parallelogram embedded in figure?
-the effect of ambiguous visual images is difficult for analog accounts to accomodate

Question 24

Imagery and the brain

Answer 24

-verbal activity is predominantly processed in left hemisphere while imagery is processed in the right
—this lateralization is related to handedness

Question 25

Fieback & Friedericis fMRI study

Answer 25

-concrete and abstract words both elicited different patterns of activity in the left hemisphere —however, concrete words do not elicit heightened activity in right hemisphere

Question 26

Kosslyn (2004)

Answer 26

-visual imagery activates almost 90% of same brain regions that are activated during visual perception —brain damage in the most basic regions of visual cortex leads to parallel problems in both visual perception and imagery

Question 27

Prosopagnosia

Answer 27

People cannot use mental imagery to distinguish between faces