Topic 11: Visual Knowledge

Francis Galton (1883)

Pioneered the study of visual imagery using self-reports and vividness ratings.

Self-report data

Participant directly describing their feelings, thoughts etc….

Chronometric studies

Measure exact reaction times to infer the timing and content of mental operations.

Imagery-scanning procedure

Demonstrated that doubling mental scanning distance doubles the time required to scan.

Mental rotation task

Involves mentally rotating one shape to match another orientation to see if they are identical.

Aphantasia

The complete inability to create or experience mental images in one's mind.

Mental folding task

Participants imagine folding an unfolded cube to decide if two arrows touch.

Mental rotation vs. folding

Mental rotation relies on the right hemisphere, while mental folding uses both hemispheres.

Eidetic imagery

Extremely detailed imagery capacity, more common in children and fading over time.

Necker cube

An ambiguous image showing that mental precepts are organized, unambiguous depictions.

Precepts

your mental representations of the stimuli you're perceiving.

Unambiguous, organized depictions

Dual coding theory

Combining verbal and pictorial info enhances memory by providing multiple retrieval paths.

Boundary extension

The tendency to remember a wider, more zoomed-out view of a scene than was actually present.

Visual imagery and perception

Trying to hold a mental image interferes with detecting dim visual stimuli.

Long-term visual memory storage

Images are stored piece-by-piece, starting with a structural framework of nodes.