visual cognition

Question 1

Information Processing Theory

Answer 1

-Input -> storage + processing -> output
-images are processed
- processing depends or question/

Question 2

Posner- early stages of visual processing

Answer 2

• present pair of visual letters on a screen
• immediately start clock + wait for ppts press a response
• speeded choice reaction time
• 3 conditions:
  1) Are the letters physically identical
  2) Do the letters share the same name?
  3) Are the letters both vowels or both consonants

Question 3

Posner early stages of visual processing - Results

Answer 3

• when determining it the letters are physically identical = fairly rapid for same
• ppts faster at responding when letters share same name
• same responses to Vowels are faster than same responses to consonants
  -> vowels less common- familiarity effect
• physical aspects of stimulus are readily recovered

Question 4

Nature of visual code

Answer 4

-Analogical representation-> mental pictures, images
- structural coding- > Non-pictorial representations

Question 5

Analogical representation evidence- representation vs process

Answer 5

• Mental transformation of letters- Cooper + Shepard
• Are you looking at normal or backwards R?
• mentally rotate
• more you tilt r from normal position, longer it takes to respond
• mental problem solving seems to depend on mentally simulating actual physical events bringing about a particular solution

Question 6

Evidence for analogical representations - studies

Answer 6

• Shepard + Mesler- classical mental rotation effect -> mental stimulation of physical operations
• Shepard + feng-mental origami -> as folds increase so does reaction time
• Kosslyn- Carthode ray-tube model

Question 7

Evidence for analogical representations - map interpretation -kosslyn, Ball + Reiser

Answer 7

-learn + draw map
- timed tasks: form mental image + fours on named location + say whether another location was on the map
-ppts mentally scan their image
- scanning was directly proportional to distance between landmarks on actual map
- conclude Mental images have spatial properties

Question 8

Evidence for analogical Mental representations
-Pylyshyn

Answer 8

• cautious conclusion is that the evidence suggests when reasoning visually humans adopt a strategy of mental simulation reflecting connection between perception + problem solving
  -mentally mimic real physical transformations
• something more than mental photocopying

Question 9

reed- evidence for structural representations

Answer 9

• Holding mental image in mind isn’t the same as physical image
  -visual perceptions appear to be based on a description of the stimulus not just a mere copy of it
  -when showing ppt a shape, ask to indicate if small shape was in the original, not very accurate

Question 10

Palmer- structural descriptions evidence- mental synthesis

Answer 10

• Bringing things together in the mind
• presented synthesis figures t asked ppts how they’d separate it
• H = high goodness - most common way > logical
  -m = medium-bit more uncomfortable
• L = low- strange
• ask to bring separated back together- quicker if high goodness

Question 11

Dual format representational schemes

Answer 11

-Descriptive representations - images
or lang descriptions