cognition - imagery

final help

imagery

detailed mental experience not triggered by direct input (perception without sensation)

it is personal and subjective (difficult to study)

does not have to be visual (ex: earworms)

Hyperphantasia

extreme imagery

mental images that are extremely detailed, almost photo-like (images have a life-like quality)

1% off the population (similar to HSAM cases)

aphantasia

lack of imagery

inability to form visual mental images when thinking about people, the past and concepts

relies on knowledge and facts rather than mental imagery to access information

not a disorder (4% of global population)

impact of imagery differences

can affect how we process information, actions and behaviours

those with aphantasia are more likely to become mathematicians and scientists

those with hyperphansia are more likely to become artists and in creative professions

impact on mental health

link ot PTSD

study: adults exposed to trauma completed online questionnaires assessing mental health, trauma exposure, PTSD symptoms, and imagery

• positive relation between PTSD symptoms and strength of object imagery

how do we represent information mentally

debate about storage of information

dual-coding theory: two interconnected ways to process and represent information

• verbal system: symbolic system, deals with words and their components like letters, syllables, etc

• non-verbal system: modality-specific system, deals with images and their components like lines, shapes, etc

depictive representations

non-verbal

analog

modality specific

propositional representations

verbal

abstract-code

amodal

The controversy: depictive representation (info is stored in a quasi-pictoral format, parts of the representation correspond to parts of the object in spatial layout)

what foramt does imagery take in our minds

dual coding: depictive and propositional representations, preserve perceptual and spacial information on one stream (youre bringing the representation to mind)

proposotional: does not preserve perceptual and spacial information, images as epiphenomenon (is a by-product of accessing the information)

propositional representation hypothesis

all information is stored as descriptive or propositional statements

propositions that can be verified as true/false (ex: the lamp is to the left of the books)

images/depictive representations are an epiphenomenon: mental imagery is a by-product of accessing information

evidence for dual-coding theory

memory enhancements for imageable items (concreteness effect)

encoding: present participants with word pairs (can be concrete/abstract)

tests to link imagery to perception

do people process mental images in the same way they process real stimuli?

mental rotation

mental scanning

mental scaling

mental rotation

measure time to rotate mental image of figures to determine of they are the same (across trials, changes how much they had to be rotated)

people take longer to answer rotate figures that require more rotation, as if in the real world (imagery linked to perception)

speed depend on how afr the object must be rotated

mental rotation and gender

men outperform women on classic paper-and-pencil mental rotation test (thought to illustrate better spatial ability tests)

could reflect sociocultural influences (rotating gender stereotyped stimuli changes the pattern)

mental scanning

the further the scanning distance, the longer the reaction time

imagery and perception are linked

island test (moving from landmark to landmark)

mental scaling

focuses on object rather than spacial imagery

(ex: animals standing next to each other, faster when bigger)

is imagery and perception activation similar brain patterns

used fMRI machine and also asked to imagine

great fusiform face area activity when seeing and imagining faces

greater parahippocampal place area activity when viewing and imagining buildings

auditory imagery vs percetion

participants either listened to or imagined sounds inside fMRI

perception: sound of instrument with its corresponding name on screen

auditory: participants imagine sounds corresponding to the instrument name

activate similar brain regions

blindsight and imagery

activity of patient with blindsight perceiving faces and houses (much less than in controls)

activity of patient with blindsight when imagining faces and houses (more extensive and similar to controls)

imagery and perception different in some respect

imagery can guide perception

quick to detect whether a probe falls on a mental image

Letter F study

used to impact in everyday life

sports training imagery: pre-game mental visualisation has been linked to better performance

mental health: imagery rescripting in which a person imagines distressing memory and rescripts it with another scenario → reduction in negative emotions

can increase distress

participants listened to description of possible events with positive and negative outcomes

2 groups: imagery and meaning group

imagery group had higher rates of anxiety to negative events

can help memory

method of loci: place objects in unexpected locations to remember them later

von restroff effect: objects are remembered better when they are bizzare among common objects

method of loci can be trained

between-subject design, MoL training group (playing games) vs passive control group (nothing)

had to memorise a word list with different delays

memory change scores indicated MoL was the most effective training protocol to improve list learning