Module 10 - Visual Imagery Flashcards
What is mental imagery?
Ability to mentally recreate a perceptual experience in the absence of stimulus
Possible for all sensory modalities, not just visual
- auditory imagery
- tactile imagery
- olfactory imagery
What is dual coding theory?
Theory about knowledge representation that proposes knowledge can be stored as an abstract verbal code or an analogue imagery-based code.
Two systems —> verbal and non verbal
Verbal —> a type of abstract code, which is when a symbol doesn’t look like their real world referent. Ex: d-o-g does not look like a real dog.
What is an onomatopoeia?
A case where the word DOES resemble its real-world referent.
Ex: sound of a dog woof woof sounds like a real dog barking.
Images are analog codes. What is that?
A way to store info that resembles the physical stimulus being represented.
Ex: visual image of dog in your hear looks like dogs you have seen in real life.
What is the imagery debate?
Theoretical debate among cognitive psychologists about whether images are stored as pictures in our minds or as propositions.
For Kosslyn, in the imagery debate, images are depictive representations. What does that mean?
They are analog codes that maintain the perceptual and spatial characteristics of physical objects. If you imagine a kitchen , you know where things are because it is stored in your semantic memory. The image in our mind maintains locations —> ex: the image in your mind will still have the microwave above the oven.
What is the alternative the depictive representations? And what is it like?
Descriptive representations
Symbolic codes that convey abstract conceptual information and do not resemble real-world referent.
Pylyshyn —> our experience of mental imagery isn’t enough to tell us the true format that we use to store knowledge. So even if we can create a mental image of the kitchen, it’s not enough.
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Images are epiphenomena —> byproduct that arises from a process but that are not causal effects on that process.
What does Pylyshyn argue that cognitive processing rely on?
Manipulating cognitive symbols called propositions.
- something that can be verified as true or false. Ex: the toaster is to the right of the stove.
What is the technique called mental scanning used by Kosslyn? What were the findings of the experiment?
mental scanning
- participants are asked to scan their mental images while response time is measured
Findings
- the farther away participants had to shift their attention to find the new part of the object, the longer the search time. Ex: flower. Start a the roots, takes longer to notice the petals than the leaves.
- Kosslyn concluded that visual images maintained the relative distance of the real picture and were not influenced by the number of landmarks present.
How does mental rotation support the idea that imagery is similar to real-world objects?
The longer the distance between two points, the longer it takes to rotate an object in your mind.
How does mental scaling support Kosslyn’s claim about the imgery debate?
Ex: when ps asked to imagine a mouse next to an elephant or a fly, they would reply faster when asked about a physical characteristic of the mouse if it was next to a fly, and therefore imagined bigger than next to the elephant.
This is similar to how you will see more details in a car that is close to you and that is therefore very big in your visual field than a car far away that is smaller.
What supports the idea that perception and imagery use the same mechanisms?
Two studies found that, if with a weak enough stimuli, people would imagine they were imagining it in their head instead of just perceiving it. The second study found that auditory imaging and visual imaging interfere with one another because if they use the same mechanism, then imagining a visual stimulus, would use up some of the processing mechanisms available for vision .
What are motion aftereffects?
They are a type of visual illusion. Happens when you look at a moving stimulus for a long time and then look at something that doesn’t move and it appears to move
What were the findings of Reed’s experiment investigating ambiguous figures (against depictive imagery)?
Ps memorized a shape and then asked if smaller shapes were part of the shape remembered.
People couldn’t find all the smaller shapes. Reed thought that maybe it was because people remembered the first shape in words (two triangles overlapping) instead of the image. So it suggested images might be stored using meaningful verbal labels rather than depictive representations.
What is another argument against depictive representations claims?
That the findings were a result of experimenter expectancy (unconsciously communicating to ps their expectations) and demand characteristics (subtle cues in tasks or instructions that my bias participants’ behaviour)
