Mental Imagery and Cognitive Representation

Vocabulary practice flashcards defining core concepts, theories, and experimental measures related to mental imagery, dual-code theory, propositional theory, and the bizarreness effect.

Mental Imagery

The mental representation of things that are not currently seen or sensed, including representations of things never experienced.

Visual Imagery

Mental representations of stimuli or objects that are not currently visible.

Auditory Imagery

The mental representation or simulation of sounds, such as imagining a fire alarm or a song.

Olfactory Imagery

The mental simulation of smells, such as imagining the scent of a rose or fried bacon.

Gustatory Imagery

The mental simulation of tastes, such as imagining the taste of a lemon or candy.

Tactile Imagery

The mental simulation of physical sensations of touch.

Dual-Code Theory

Paivio's theory proposing that information is represented, stored, and retrieved using two separate codes: pictorial (imaginal/analogical) and verbal (symbolic).

Analog Codes

Mental representations that resemble the physical objects or phenomena they represent, such as visualizing the round shape and red color of an apple.

Symbolic Code

Verbal mental representations where arbitrary symbols do not physically resemble what they represent, such as the symbol "9" or the word "dog".

Concrete Words

Words that are easily visualized (such as "book" or "window") and are generally recalled better than abstract words.

Abstract Words

Words that cannot be easily visualized (such as "peace" or "harmony") and are typically more difficult to recall.

Propositional Theory

The theory stating that knowledge is stored not as mental pictures or words, but in one abstract form: propositions that capture meanings and relationships between concepts.

Epiphenomenon

A secondary byproduct or result of deeper cognitive processes, which is how Propositional Theory characterizes the conscious experience of a mental image.

Mentalese

An internal, abstract mental language through which thoughts are processed, rather than directly in spoken natural languages such as English or Vietnamese.

Proposition

An abstract representation of the underlying meaning or relationship between concepts in a sentence or scene.

Predicate Calculus

A formal, shorthand system for expressing the underlying meaning of propositions by specifying a relationship, a subject, and an object.

Image Scaling

The ability to mentally manipulate, zoom in, or scale images in the "mind's eye" in the same way physical objects are scaled or perceived in real vision.

Functional-Equivalence Hypothesis

The hypothesis stating that mental images function in the same way as actual visual perceptions, meaning mental resolution is subject to the same constraints as physical eyesight.

Image Scanning

The cognitive process of scanning across an imagined scene or map, where reaction times increase systematically as the physical distance between points increases.

Representational Neglect

A cognitive impairment in which an individual ignores half of an imagined scene when asked to describe it from memory.

Spatial Neglect

A neurological condition where an individual ignores or fails to attend to half of their physical visual field.

Imagery Debate

The scientific debate addressing whether mental images resemble visual perception (analog codes) or abstract, language-like structures (propositional codes).

Prosopagnosia

A condition characterized by the inability to recognize human faces visually, accompanied by corresponding difficulties in generating visual mental imagery for faces.

Mental Rotation

The mental manipulation of visual representations, in which the time taken to evaluate an image increases as the angle of rotation increases (such as taking longer for $180^\circ$ than $90^\circ$).

Experimenter Expectancy

A bias that occurs when an experimenter's preconceived beliefs and expectations unintentionally influence experimental outcomes.

Bizarre Imagery Effect

The memory phenomenon where sentences describing unusual, implausible, or bizarre scenarios are better remembered than sentences describing ordinary, common scenarios.

Dynamic Visual Noise (DVN)

A visual distraction task consisting of a display of flickering black-and-white squares, used to examine if disrupting visual imagery reduces the bizarreness effect.

Sentence Access

A memory metric in sentence recall experiments where a sentence is scored as accessed if a participant recalls at least one noun from that sentence.

Noun Recall

The proportion of studied nouns from presented sentences that participants are able to successfully remember.

Spatial Tapping

A visuospatial distractor task in which participants repeatedly tap four points arranged in a diamond pattern on a board to disrupt visuospatial working memory.