Chapter 7: Mental Imagery and Cognitive Maps

Perception

This requires the mechanisms of both bottom-up and top-down processing

Top-down

These type of processes exclusively give rise to one’s ability to create mental images

Mental Imagery

Mental representation of stimuli when it is not physically present in the environment

Visual Imagery

Mental representation of visual stimuli

Auditory Imagery

Mental representation of auditory stimuli

Wundt

One of the early psychologists who considered imagery as an important discipline

Behaviorists

They strongly opposed research on mental imagery because they believe that it could not be connected to observable behavior

Roger Shepard and Jacqueline Metzler

They conducted experiments on mental rotation which revealed that decision time was strongly influenced by the amount of mental rotation required to match a figure with its corresponding mate

Motor Cortex

Part of the brain that is stimulated during mental rotation and is targeted in exercises for stroke patients to shorten the time required before making actual movements

Imagery Debate

An important controversy that questions whether our mental images resemble perception or language more

Analog Code

A representation that closely resembles the physical object

Analog-code Approach

This argues that mental imagery is a close relative of perception. Specifically, individual creates mental images of an object that closely resembles the actual perceptual image on the retina.

Propositional Code

An abstract, language-like representation

Propositional-code Approach

This argues that mental imagery is a close relative of language and that we use verbal descriptions to generate a visual image

Visualizers

Individuals who report the experience of constructing strong mental images

Verbalizers

Individuals who rely less on mental images and more on visual descriptions

Demand Characteristics

Refers to all the cues that might convey the experimenter’s hypothesis to the participant

Meta-analysis

A statistical method for combining studies on a single topic and yields an effect size denoted by d

Pitch

A characteristic of a sound stimulus that can be arranged in a scale ranging from low to high

Brown/Peterson & Peterson Technique

One of the classical studies on pitch that examined how quickly people could “travel” the distance between two auditory stimuli that differ in pitch

Timbre

A characteristic of a sound stimulus that is concerned with sound quality of a tone

Cognitive Map

Mental representation of geographic information, including the environment that surrounds

Spatial Cognition

This primarily refers to cognitive activities including thoughts about cognitive maps, how individual remember the world, and how they keep track of objects in a spatial array

Heuristic

A general problem-solving strategy that usually produces a correct solution, but not all the time

Border Bias

People estimate that the distance between two locations is larger if they are on different sides of a geographic border compared to when they are on the same side of the border

Landmark Effect

A general tendency to provide shorter estimates when traveling to a landmark (important geographical location)

90-degree-angle Heuristic

When people use this, they tend to represent angles in a mental map as being closer to 90 degrees than they really are

Rotation Heuristic

A figure that is slightly tilted will be remembered as being either more vertical or more horizontal than it really is. It requires orienting figures in a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion so that their border is in nearly vertical or horizontal direction

Alignment Heuristic

A series of separate geographic structures will be remembered as being more lined up than they really are. This requires lining up figures in a straight row.

Spatial Framework Model

A model that emphasizes that above-below spatial dimension is especially important in our thinking, the front-back dimension is moderately important, and the right-left dimension is the least important.

Situated Cognition Approach

We make use of helpful information that we can find in the immediate environment or situation. Therefore, it tells us that our knowledge depends on the context that surrounds us and that what we know depends on the situation we are in

Zenon Pylyshyn

A strong supporter of the propositional code perspective. Although he believes that individuals do experience mental images, he notes that these are not necessary or central components of imagery

Stephen Reed

He was concerned that mental imagery might have some limitations and because of that argues that perhaps language helps us store visual stimuli in some occassions

Star of David

A complex pattern or figure that has a high error rate during storage hence, sometimes necessitates the use of verbal descriptions

Spatial Visualization, Spatial Perception, and Mental Rotation

The skills represented by Spatial Ability