Mental Imagery, Spatial Cognition, and Attention

Vocabulary flashcards reviewing key terms, hypotheses, theories, brain regions, and experimental paradigms related to mental imagery, spatial cognition, and attention.

Dual-coding hypothesis (Paivio)

Information is remembered better when encoded both verbally and visually.

Conceptual peg

A concrete idea or representation that helps organize or remember information.

Relational-organizational hypothesis (Bower)

Memory improves when information is organized by relationships between items.

Dual-task study

A study examining how performing two tasks simultaneously affects performance.

Interference

When one mental task disrupts performance on another task.

Symbolic distance effect

People compare items faster when the difference between them is greater.

Mental rotation (Shepard and Metzler, 1971)

Mentally rotating an object to determine whether it matches another object.

Advance information (Cooper and Shepard, 1973)

Information provided before a task that helps prepare a person to respond.

PET scan

An imaging technique used to measure activity in the brain.

Perceptual equivalence

Mental imagery and visual perception use similar mechanisms.

Spatial equivalence

Mental images preserve spatial relationships similar to those in actual perception.

Transformational equivalence

Mental transformations follow patterns similar to transformations in perception.

Structural equivalence

Mental imagery follows organizational principles similar to visual perception.

Implicit encoding

Storing information without consciously trying to memorize it.

Imagery priming

Mental imagery influences how quickly a person recognizes or detects a stimulus.

Mental scanning (Kosslyn)

Mentally shifting attention between locations in an imagined image.

Memory maps (Tversky)

Mental representations of places that can be simplified or distorted.

Spatial cognition

The mental processes involved in understanding, remembering, and navigating space.

Cognitive map (Tolman)

A mental representation of the layout of an environment.

Latent learning

Learning that occurs without an immediate reward or obvious demonstration.

Mental imagery

Mentally representing an object, event, or scene without it being physically present.

Hippocampus

A brain region important for spatial memory, navigation, and forming memories.

Parietal lobes

Brain regions important for spatial awareness and directing attention.

Attention

The process of selecting information for further mental processing.

Consciousness

Awareness of internal experiences and the external environment.

Selective attention

Focusing on relevant information while ignoring competing stimuli.

Divided attention

Distributing attention across two or more tasks.

Non-selective attention

Broadly processing information without focusing exclusively on one specific stimulus.

Arousal

A person's level of alertness and physiological activation.

Bottleneck theory

The idea that limited processing capacity prevents all information from receiving full processing.

Broadbent's filter theory

Unattended information is filtered out early based on physical characteristics before its meaning is fully processed.

Treisman's attenuation theory

Unattended information is weakened rather than completely blocked.

Dichotic listening

Presenting different auditory messages to each ear to study attention.

Shadowing

Repeating a message aloud while listening to it.

Cocktail party effect

Noticing personally relevant information, such as your name, while attending to something else.

Automatic processing

Processing information with little conscious effort or intentional control.

Controlled processing

Processing information that requires conscious attention and mental effort.

Practice and automaticity

Repeated practice makes tasks require less conscious attention.

Feature integration theory

Attention combines individual features, such as color and shape, into a unified object.

Illusory conjunction

Incorrectly combining features belonging to different objects.

Spotlight metaphor

The idea that attention focuses on a particular location like a spotlight.

Overt attention

Directing the eyes toward a stimulus or location.

Covert attention

Shifting attention without moving the eyes.

Scope of attention

The size of the area receiving attention.

Intensity of attention

The degree to which attention is concentrated on information.

Posner paradigm

An experiment that studies spatial attention using cues and target locations.

Valid cue

A cue that indicates the location where the target actually appears.

Invalid cue

A cue that indicates a different location from where the target appears.

Neutral cue

A cue that provides no useful information about the target's location.

Exogenous attention

Attention automatically captured by an external stimulus.

Endogenous attention

Attention voluntarily directed according to goals or expectations.

Event-related potential (ERP)

A measure of electrical brain activity associated with a specific event or stimulus.

Hemispatial neglect

Failure to attend to one side of space, often following brain damage.

Frontal lobes and attention

The frontal lobes help control attention and goal-directed behavior.

Parietal lobes and attention

The parietal lobes help direct attention toward spatial locations.

Mindfulness meditation and attention

Mindfulness practice may influence brain activity involved in attention and emotional processing.

Divided attention while driving

Performing another task while driving can reduce attention available for driving.

Sanbonmatsu et al. (2013)

Research examining multitasking, media use, and cellphone use while driving.

Finke's principles of visual imagery

Principles describing similarities between mental imagery and visual perception.

Gestalt approaches

Approaches emphasizing how individual elements are organized into meaningful wholes.