Jonides et al. (1985) study + Steve Kosslyn’s experiments

Jonides Main concept

• People can use mental representations of spatial relationships, and the distance between represented locations can influence how they perform a task

Jonides example

 someone might mentally represent the relative locations of two objects and use that representation to answer a question about their positions

Knowing that one location is farther away than another is conceptual knowledge

 whereas mentally representing the spatial layout involves imagery

Steve Kosslyn’s

Kosslyn investigated whether mental images preserve spatial characteristics similar to real visual perception.

Steve Kosslyn’s Mental scanning experiment METHOD

• Participants memorized a map containing several landmarks.

• They imagined the map.

• They focused on one landmark and mentally moved their attention to another landmark.

• Researchers measured how long it took to mentally scan between locations.

Steve Kosslyn’s Mental scanning experiment RESULTS

•  The greater the distance between landmarks, the longer participants took to scan between them.

•  Mental imagery appears to preserve spatial relationships

Steve Kosslyn’s Image zooming / mental image size METHOD

• Participants imagined objects at different sizes and answered questions about their visual details.

• For example, they might imagine a rabbit next to a fly versus a rabbit next to an elephant.

• The relative size of the rabbit in the mental image could change.

Steve Kosslyn’s Image zooming / mental image size RESULTS

•  Participants generally took longer to identify small visual details when an object occupied less space in their imagined scene.

• Mental images appear to have size-related properties similar to visual perception.

Kosslyn's interpretation

• Kosslyn argued that mental imagery uses depictive or spatial representations.

• In other words, mental images preserve information about spatial layout, relative size, and distance.

Alternative theory: Pylyshyn's propositional theory

• n argued that mental representations may be fundamentally propositional, meaning they are encoded as abstract relationships rather than picture-like representations.

• According to this perspective, people may produce imagery-like results using stored knowledge, expectations, and learned rules.