Visual Imagery, Spatial Cognition

• Mental Rotation


  The greater difference in orientation= longer response time
• Shepard and Metzler experiment

  • Results showed that response times were same if they were given shapes to physically rotate as they were if the participants had to mentally rotate them
• Image scanning


  Kossyln: Map studies - If given a starting point (without the map in front of them) then asked questions about different points on the map the further away the location, the longer it took for a response as if people were mentally scanning across the map to find the locations
• Analog View


  Mental images are useful in memory coding
• Propositional View


  We store only abstract linguistic codes in memory
• Method of Loci


  Associate one item with an important location along your journey, recall list by replacing your steps
• Pegword Method


  First learn list of ordered, paired clues (numbers with rhyming cues), then associate each thing to remember with the paired cues
• Dual code theory


  Visual images are beneficial to memory because it allows information to be stored in two distinct ways
• Neurological studies indicate that processing mental images activates areas of the brain involved in visual perception, a result that is incongruent with non-image based propositional storage accounts
• Properties of Visual Images (Finke)

  • Implicit - without overtly encoding the information, it is possible to access the image in memory and retrieve it
  • Spatial Equivalence - spatial relations in images should correspond to spatial relations in the actual physical space
  • Perceptual Equivalence - imagery and manipulating those images should activate similar brain and mental systems as does the actual perception of the physical item
  • Transformational Equivalence - performance in mental rotation or image transformation, was very similar to performances in transforming actual objects
  • Structural Equivalence - images should be organized much like physical objects
• Analog View


  Visual images are actually visually based codes stored in memory that closely resemble the original object
• Propositional View


  Images are merely by-products of abstract and verbal, or propositional cues - images may be formed as a consequence, but we do not process them or operate on them as we would a physical object
• Kossyin study: Processing images appears to recruit same brain areas as does processing actual visual space
• Patient MGS Case study: Removal of part of the occipital lobe reduces physical field of view and field of view for images