Visual and Mental Imagery: Cognitive Processes and Theories

Visual imagery

seeing in the absence of a visual stimulus

Mental imagery

Experiencing a sensory impression in the absence of sensory input

Imageless thought debate

whether thought is possible in the absence of images

Imagery and the cognitive revolution

Developed ways to measure behavior that could be used to infer cognitive processes

What is the conceptual peg hypothesis?

Enhances memories for types of words

Which theory is the conceptual peg hypothesis associated with?

Paivio's dual coding theory.

How does the conceptual peg hypothesis enhance memory?

By allowing other words to hang onto images created by concrete nouns.

Mental chronometry

determining the amount of time needed to carry out cognitive tasks

Aphantasia

Inability to generate mental images voluntarily

Method of loci

using the concept of a walk to remember a series or order

Pegword technique

Associate items to be remembered with concrete words

What is the degraded pictures task?

A task where a line drawing is degraded by omitting parts and obscuring it with a visual noise pattern.

What is the goal of the degraded pictures task?

The person's task is to identify the object.

What is a depictive representation?

Representations that are like realistic pictures of an object.

What do parts of a depictive representation correspond to?

Parts of the object being represented.

Epiphenomenon

something that accompanies the real mechanism but is not actually part of the mechanism

Imagery debate

The debate about whether imagery is based on spatial mechanisms or on propositional mechanisms

What are imagery neurons?

Neurons in the human brain that fire when a person sees a picture of an object.

Who studied imagery neurons?

Kreiman

What do imagery neurons do when a person creates a visual image of an object?

They fire in the same way as when the person sees a picture of the object.

Imagination

the ability to create ideas or pictures in your mind

Mental rotation task

a task that involves judging whether two presented figures match in orientation

Mental scanning

A process of imagery in which a person mentally scans an image

Mental walk task

assignment asking subjects to think of an image and imagine they are moving toward it

Object imagery

The ability to image visual details, features, or objects

What is paired-associate learning?

A learning procedure in which items to be recalled are learned in pairs.

How does recall work in paired-associate learning?

During recall, one member of the pair is presented and the other is to be recalled.

Paper folding test (PFT)

A test in which a piece of paper is folded and then pierced by a pencil to create a hole

Propositional representation

A representation in which relationships are represented by symbols, as when the words

Spatial imagery

the ability to image spatial relations

Topographic map

A map that shows the surface features of an area.

What is unilateral neglect?

A problem caused by brain damage in which the patient ignores objects in one half of their visual field.

Vividness of visual imagery questionnaire (VVIQ)

A test in which people are asked to rate the vividness of mental images they create

Compare the "picture in your head" with the experience of actually seeing an object

- lacks the vividness, precision, and reliability of seeing something with your eyes.

- Imagery is a reconstructed, less detailed version created by the mind.

Describe the evidence for the argument that imagery and perception involve the same mechanisms

- overlapping brain systems.

- Neuroimaging studies find that imagining an object activates many of the same areas—such as the visual cortex—that are active when actually seeing it.

- tasks like mental rotation and imagining objects of different sizes produce response patterns similar to those observed during real perception.

- Visual tasks interfere with imagery performance, and patients with visual perception damage often have parallel difficulties in mental imagery, suggesting shared mechanisms.

Describe the evidence against the argument that imagery and perception involve the same mechanisms

- Some individuals with brain damage lose the ability to perceive visual details but retain vivid mental images, while others can see normally but struggle to imagine objects, indicating separate pathways.

- Imagery is also less detailed, less stable, and more dependent on top-down memory than perception, which relies on external sensory input.

- These differences suggest that although imagery and perception overlap, they do not rely entirely on the same cognitive mechanisms.