VISUAL IMAGERY

 Seeing in the absence of a visual stimulus

 Mental Imagery – ability to recreate the sensory world in the absence of physical stimuli, also occurs in senses other than
vision
 Imagery provides a way of thinking that adds another dimension to the verbal techniques usually associated with thinking

IMAGERY IN THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY

Early Ideas about Imagery

 Wilhelm Wundt:
o images were one of the three basic elements of consciousness, along with sensations and feelings
o because images accompany thought, studying images was a way of studying thinking
 Imageless thought debate: “thought is impossible without an image” VS. “thinking can occur without images”
 Francis Galton: imagery was not required for thinking; people who had great difficulty forming visual images were still quite
capable of thinking
 John Watson: described images as “unproven” and “mythological” and therefore not worthy of study; behaviourists
branded the study of imagery as unproductive because visual images are invisible to everyone except the person
experiencing them.

Imagery and the Cognitive Revolution

 Alan Paivio: showed that it was easier to remember concrete nouns, like truck or tree, that can be imaged, than it is to
remember abstract nouns, like truth or justice, that are difficult to image
o He inferred cognitive processes by measuring memory
o Paired-associate learning: participants are presented with pairs of words, like boat–hat or car–house, during a
study period. They are then presented, during the test period, with the first word from each pair. Their task is to
recall the word that was paired with it during the study period. Thus, if they were presented with the word boat,
the correct response would be hat.
o Conceptual peg hypothesis: concrete nouns create images that other words can “hang onto.” For example, if
presenting the pair boat-hat creates an image of a boat, then presenting the word boat later will bring back the
boat image, which provides a number of places on which participants can place the hat in their mind
 Roger Shepard and J. Metzler: inferred cognitive processes by using mental chronometry – determining the amount of
time needed to carry out various cognitive tasks
o This result was interpreted as showing that participants were
mentally rotating one of the views to see whether it matched the
other one.
o What was important about this experiment was that it was one of
the first to apply quantitative methods to the study of imagery and to
suggest that imagery and perception may share the same
mechanisms.

IMAGERY AND PERCEPTION: DO THEY SHARE THE SAME MECHANISMS?

 The idea that imagery and perception may share the same mechanisms is based on the observation that although mental
images differ from perception in that they are not as vivid or long lasting, imagery shares many properties with perception.
 Both involve spatial representation of the stimulus. That is, the spatial experience for both imagery and perception
matches the layout of the actual stimulus.
 Mental scanning – task to create mental images and then scan them in their minds.

Kosslyn’s Mental Scanning Experiments

 
 Kosslyn (1973) asked participants to memorize a picture of an object, and then to create an image of that object in their
mind and to focus on one part of the boat, such as the anchor. They were then asked to look for another part of the boat,
such as the motor, and to press the “true” button when they found this part or the “false” button when they couldn’t find
it.
 Kosslyn reasoned that if imagery, like perception, is spatial, then it should take longer for participants to find parts that are
located farther from the initial point of focus because they would be scanning across the image of the object.
 G. Lea: as participants scanned, they may have encountered other interesting parts, such as the cabin, and this distraction
may have increased their reaction time.
 To answer this concern, Kosslyn and coworkers (1978) did another scanning experiment, this time asking participants to
scan between two places on a map. Just as in the boat experiment, it took longer to scan between greater distances on the
image, a result that supports the idea that visual imagery is spatial in nature.
 Another explanation by Zenon Pylyshyn: imagery debate - a debate about whether imagery is based on spatial mechanisms,
such as those involved in perception, or is based on mechanisms related to language, called propositional mechanisms.

The Imagery Debate: Is Imagery Spatial or Propositional?

 Spatial representation - a representation in which different parts of an image can be described as corresponding to specific
locations in space
 Pylyshyn: just because we experience imagery as spatial, that doesn’t mean that the underlying representation is spatial.
After all, one thing that is clear from research in cognitive psychology is that we often aren’t aware of what is going on in
our mind.
 Epiphenomenon - something that accompanies the real mechanism but is not actually part of the mechanism.
 Propositional representation - one in which relationships can be represented by abstract symbols, such as an equation, or a
statement such as “The cat is under the table.”
 Depictive representation - representations that are like realistic pictures that resemble an object, so that part of the
representation corresponds to parts of the object.


 
 Figure 10.6 shows how the visual appearance of this boat can be represented propositionally. The words indicate parts of
the boat, the length of the lines indicate the distances between the parts, and the words in parentheses indicate the spatial
relations between the parts. A representation such as this would predict that when starting at the motor, it should take
longer to scan and find the anchor than to find the porthole because it is necessary to travel across three links to get to the
porthole (dashed line) and four links to get to the anchor (dotted line). This kind of explanation proposes that imagery
operates in a way similar to the semantic networks.
 In addition to suggesting that Kosslyn’s results can be explained in terms of propositional representations, Pylyshyn also
suggested that one reason that scanning time increases as the distance between two points on an image increases is that
participants are responding to Kosslyn’s tasks based on what they know about what usually happens when they are looking
at a real scene.
o Tacit knowledge explanation – it states that participants unconsciously use knowledge about the world in making
their judgments.
 “When asked to imagine something, people ask themselves what it would look like to see it, and they
then simulate as many aspects of this staged event as they can”
 Finke and Pinker’s “flashed dot” experiment argued against the tacit knowledge explanation. The following experiments
also demonstrated parallels between imagery and perception: (a) size in the visual field (visual walk task); (b) interaction
between perception and imagery (Perky’s 1910 experiment; Farah’s H/T experiment); and (c) physiological experiments.

Comparing Imagery and Perception

 Most psychologists, taking all of the above evidence into account, have concluded that imagery is closely related to
perception and shares some (but not all) mechanisms
 Size in the Visual Field
 o
o The result of these experiments, shown alongside the pictures, was that participants answered questions about
the rabbit more rapidly when it filled more of the visual field.
o Mental walk task - imagine that they were walking toward their mental image of an animal. Their task was to
estimate how far away they were from the animal when they began to experience “overflow”—when the image
filled the visual field or when its edges started becoming fuzzy. The result was that participants had to move closer
for small animals (less than a foot for a mouse) than for larger animals (about 11 feet for an elephant), just as they
would have to do if they were walking toward actual animals. This result provides further evidence for the idea
that images are spatial, just like perception.
 Interactions of Imagery and Perception
o If imagery affects perception, or perception affects imagery, this means that imagery and perception both have
access to the same mechanisms.

o
 o The classic demonstration of interaction between perception and imagery dates back to 1910, when Cheves Perky
did the experiment pictured in ● Figure 10.10. Perky asked her participants to “project” visual images of common
objects onto a screen, and then to describe these images. Unbeknownst to the participants, Perky was back-
projecting a very dim image of this object onto the screen. Thus, when participants were asked to create an image
of a banana, Perky projected a dim image of a banana onto the screen. Interestingly, the participants’ descriptions
of their images matched the images that Perky was projecting. For example, they described the banana as being
oriented vertically, just as was the projected image. Even more interesting, not one of Perky’s 24 participants
noticed that there was an actual picture on the screen. They had apparently mistaken an actual picture for a
mental image.

Is There a Way to Resolve the Imagery Debate?

 Instead of relying solely on behavioural experiments, we should investigate how the brain responds to visual imagery.

IMAGERY AND THE BRAIN

 Parallels between perception and imagery have been demonstrated physiologically by the following methods:
o (a) recording from single neurons (imagery neurons);
o (b) brain imaging (demonstrating overlapping activation in the brain);
o (c) transcranial magnetic stimulation experiments (comparing the effect of brain inactivation on perception and
imagery); and
o (d) neuropsychological case studies (removal of visual cortex affects image size; unilateral neglect).

Imagery Neurons in the Brain

 Imagery neurons – neurons that respond to some objects but not to others when imagined; they respond both to
perceiving an object and to imagining it.

Brain Imaging

 PET or fMRI


 Figure 10.13 shows how activity in the striate cortex increased both when a person observed presentations of actual visual
stimuli (marked “Perception”) and when the person was imagining the stimulus (“Imagery”)
  However, in Figure 10.15c, which shows activity nearer the back of the brain, the color in the far right column indicates
that some areas respond more for perception than for imagery. This greater activity for perception isn’t surprising
because this is the location of the visual receiving area, where signals from the retina first reach the cortex. Thus, there
is almost complete overlap of the activation caused by perception and imagery in the front of the brain, but some
differences near the back of the brain.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

 Showing that an area of the brain is activated by imagery does not prove that this activity causes imagery; an
epiphenomenon again
 Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) - A participant’s behavior is tested while the brain area is deactivated (by
applying a pulsating magnetic field to the skull using a stimulating coil). If the behavior is disrupted, it is concluded that
the deactivated area of the brain is causing that behavior.
 The result indicated that stimulation caused participants to respond more slowly, and that this slowing effect occurred
both for perception and for imagery. Based on this result, Kosslyn concluded that the brain activation that occurs in
response to imagery is not an epiphenomenon and that brain activity in the visual cortex plays a causal role in both
perception and imagery.

Neuropsychological Case Studies

 Removing part of the visual cortex decreases image size

 Perceptual problems are accompanied by problems with imagery
 Dissociations between imagery and perception
 Making sense of the neuropsychological results

USING IMAGERY TO IMPROVE MEMORY

Placing Images at Locations

 Organizational function of imagery: The power of imagery to improve memory is tied to its ability to create organized
locations upon which memories for specific items can be placed.
 Example: According to legend, 2,500 years ago Simonides presented an address at a banquet, and just after he left the
banquet, the roof of the hall collapsed, killing most of the people inside. To compound this tragedy, many of the bodies
were so severely mutilated that they couldn’t be identified. But Simonides realized that as he had looked out over the
audience during his address, he had created a mental picture of where each person had been seated at the banquet table.
Based on this image of people’s locations around the table, he was able to determine who had been killed.
 Method of loci - a method in which things to be remembered are placed at different locations in a mental image of a spatial
layout.
 Demonstration: Pick a place with a spatial layout that is very familiar to you, such as the rooms in your house or apartment,
or the buildings on your college campus. Then pick five to seven things that you want to remember—either events from the
past or things you need to do later today. Create an image representing each event, and place each image at a location in
the house. If you need to remember the events in a particular order, decide on a path you would take while walking
through the house or campus, and place the images representing each event along your walking path so they will be
 encountered in the correct order. After you have done this, retrace the path in your mind, and see if encountering the
images helps you remember the events. To really test this method, try mentally “walking” this path a few hours from now.

Associating Images with Words

 Pegword technique - involves imagery, as in the method of loci, but instead of visualizing items in different locations, you
associate them with concrete words.
 Pegs are already known and are easy to remember, e.g. numbers and alphabets; also like a clothes hanger with different
clothes to hang
 A  alligator  toothpaste (use vivid images)
 Peg list may contain:
o Numbers – number shape technique, number rhyme technique
o Letters A-Z – alphabet peg method
o Animal names – animal word peg method
o Body parts – body parts method
o List of familiar songs – sing-a-long method
 Application of peg system:
o List of items
o Short or medium numbers
o Dates, birthdays, anniversaries
o Information for exams