Chapter 7: Mental Imagery and Cognitive Maps

perception

requires both bottom-up and top-down processing, but it is possible to have sensory-related experiences without bottom-up input being registered by your sensory receptors.

knowledge driven

mental imagery is __________

long-term memory and objects from previous experiences

From where does the components of mental imagery derived from?

mental imagery

refers to the mental representation of stimuli when those stimuli are not physically present in the environment

any sensory experience

what can you have mental images about

auditory imagery

mental representation of auditory stimuli

PTSD, depression and eating disorders

disorders that sometimes report that they experience intrusive, distressing mental images.

STEM disciplines

spatial ability is extremely important in?

Albert Einstein

reported that his own thinking processes typically used spatial images instead of verbal descriptions

Nora Newcombe

described some interesting methods for enhancing young children's spatial skills

any age

improvement of spatial skills can happen at what age

not identical

imagery and perception share many characteristics but are?

once bottom-up information has been processed

when is an object recognized enough for the marching process to occur in perception

one-tenth of a second longer

how long does it take to create a visual image

hallmark of creativity and imagination

the ability to create and manipulate mental images are often considered as

cognitive tasks

internal images are often necessary to perform ________ _________

Wilhem Wundt

considered imagery to be an important part of the discipline

John Watson

strongly opposed research on mental imagery because it could not be connected to observable behavior at the same time argued that imagery does not exist

mental rotation

process of imagining an object turning in three-dimensional space

Roger Shepard and Jacqueline Metzler

experiment on rotating objects mentally; researched that if mind rotates images when comparing 2 objects, people would take longer to respond when difference between angles of images is increased.

8 participants and 1600 pairs of lines

how many participants did Shepard and Metzler's research and how many lines did they judge

True

True or False. We may not always have conscious access to the processes associated with mental imagery

longer

It will take you __________ to rotate a physical object by 180 degrees than to rotate it by only 90 degrees

more quickly

people make judgments ________ if they need to rotate a mental image in a short distance

right ; both

right handers: ______ faster ; left handers: _________

skilled

deaf individuals who are fluent in ASL are especially _________ in looking at an arrangement of objects in a scene and mentally rotating that scene by 180 degrees

primary motor cortex

Part of the brain that showed activity when participants needed to rotate the original geometric figure with their hands

nature of the instructions

What can influence the pattern of activation in the cortex?

right frontal lobes and parietal lobes

when people received the standard instructions to rotate the figure, what parts of the brain were activated ?

left temporal lobe and part of the motor cortex

when given modified instructions the pattern of activation involved what parts of the brain?

imagery debate

The debate about whether imagery is based on spatial mechanisms, such as those involved in perception, or on propositional mechanisms that are related to language.

analog code and propositional code

two sides of the imagery debate

analog code

majority of theorists believe that information is stored this way. Is a representation that closely resembles the physical object

closely resembles

when you engage in mental imagery, you create a mental image of an object that _________ __________ the actual perceptual image on your retina

False

True or False.

When using the analog code theorists suggest that people literally have a picture in their head.

True

When using the analog code, people often fail to notice precise visual details when they look at an object

propositional code

an abstract, language-like representation; storage is neither visual nor spatial, and it does not physically resemble the original stimulus

language

According to the propositional code, mental imagery is a close relative to_____ and not perception

Zenon Pylyshyn

Strongest supporter of propositional code

less likely to be stable and easy to re-reference over time

According to Pylyshyn, mental are images are?

primary visual cortex

part of the brain that is activated when people work on tasks that require detailed visual imagery, which is the same part that is active when perceiving visual objects

prosopagnosia

the inability to recognize faces visually, though they perceived other objects relatively normally. they also experience problems in creating visual imagery for faces

colors and visual imagery created in a mental image

Individuals with brain damage cannot distinguish between?

Stephen Reed

was concerned that mental imagery might have some limitations. theorized that language helps us store visual stimuli on some occasions. Argued that people store pictures as descriptions.

analog code ; more complex figures

______: simple figures ; propositional:_______

visualizers

Individuals who report the experience of constructing strong mental images

verbalizers

people who rely less on mental images and more on verbal descriptions

cognitive neuroscientific techniques

May be able to shed light on whether individuals that self-report larger amounts of mental imagery are indeed more likely to make activate portions of the visual cortex than their verbalizing counterparts

magnetoencephalography

is a cognitive neuroscientific testing method wherein stimulus-evoked neural activity is recorded via sensors placed on the scalp

similar ; quicker

longer: _______ ; _______ different

demand characteristics

cues that might convey the experimenter's hypothesis to the participant

meta-analysis

a statistical method for combining numerous studies on a single topic.

spatial visualization, spatial perception, mental rotation

Types of spatial ability

Males

Are more likely to find the difference between two geometric shapes if they were rotated

auditory imagery

mental representation of sounds when sounds are not physically present

animal noises

where do we typically have auditory imagery for distinctive noises

pitch

is a characteristic of a sound stimulus that can be arranged on a scale from low to high

Margaret J. Intons-Peterson

One of the creators of the Brown/peterson and Peterson technique. Examine dhow quickly people could "trave;" the distance between two auditory stimuli that differ in pitch

Timbre

describes the sound quality of a tone

Andrea Halpern

focused on people's auditory imagery for timbre of musical instruments

perception condition

participants listened to a 1.5 second segment of one musical instrument followed by a 1.5 second segment of another instrument

imagined condition

participants heard the names of the instruments rather than their sounds

cognitive map

mental representation of geographic information, including the environment that surrounds us. can also represent larger geographic areas, such as a city. represent areas that are too large to be seen in a single glance.

spatial cognition

how we remember the world we navigate, how we keep track of objects in spatial array and our thoughts about cognitive maps

heuristic

A general problem solving strategy that usually produces a correct solution. is often used in making judgments abt cognitive maps

border bias

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

landmark effect

general tendency to provide shorter estimates when traveling to a landmark rather than a non landmark

90-degree-angle-heuristic

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

alignment heuristic

a series of separate geographic structures will be remembered as being more lined up than they really are

single; alignment heuristic

rotation heuristic: _________; __________: several

spatial framework model

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

franklin and Barbara Tversky

who proposed the spatial framework model

front-back ; right-left ; more quickly

________: more slowly ; _______; most difficult ; north-south:________

situated cognition approach

we make use of helpful information in the immediate environment or situation. Usually important when we create mental maps, form concepts and solve problems