Lecture 8 — Imagery

Mental imagery

The ability to recreate the sensory world in the absence of physical stimuli.

- Images

- Inner voices

- Imagined flavours

- Illusory touch

Aphantasia

Inability to imagine sensory experiences, such as visualizing a scene, hearing music in the mind, or imagining a specific smell.

Pylyshyn (1973)

- Spatial representation is an epiphenomenon

- Proposed that imagery is propositional

Epiphenomenon

Something that accompanies the real mechanism but is not actually part of the mechanism. Spatial experience ≠ spatial representation.

Propositional

Imagery can be represented by abstract symbols.

Articulatory suppression

Interference with operation of the phonological loop that occurs when a person repeats an irrelevant word such as "the" while carrying out a task that requires the phonological loop.

Pylyshyn (2003)

Kosslyn's results can be explained by using real-word knowledge unconsciously.

Tacit- knowledge explanation

- People respond as they expect the researcher wants them to respond. Not as they really use imagery.

Diagonals

Diagonals tend to be remembered as straight lines.

Method of Loci

Visualizing items to be remembered in different locations in a mental image of a spatial layout. Memory palace.

Pegword technique

Use of familiar words or names as cues to recall items that have been associated with them.

Synaesthesia

A perceptual experience in which stimulation of one sense produces additional unusual experiences in another sense.

Mental imagery predictions

Mental imagery can make predictions for actions.

fMRI

A form of magnetic resonance imaging of the brain that registers blood flow to functioning areas of the brain.

Le Bihan et al. (1993)

- Overlap in brain activation, when perceiving and during visual imagery.

- Visual cortex.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Using strong magnets to briefly interrupt normal brain activity as a way to study the effect on brain regions.

Unilateral neglect

A syndrome in which people ignore objects located toward their left and the left sides of objects located anywhere; most often caused by damage to the right parietal lobe. Not a problem of vision, but of attention.

Prosopagnasia

Inability to recognize faces; face blindness.