PSYC 2220 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Tacit Knowledge, Chronometry, Wilhelm Wundt
19 Dec 2017
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Document Summary
Mental imagery- the ability to recreate the sensory world in the absence of physical stimuli. Imageless thought debate- thought is impossible without image, and the contending argument that thought can occur without images. Wundt proposed that imagery was one of the 3 basic elements of consciousness, along with sensations and feelings. It is easier to imagine concrete nouns (boat, hat) rather than abstract nouns (justice, truth) The spatial experience for imagery and perception matches the layout of the actual stimulus. Imagery debate- whether imagery is based on spatial mechanisms such as those involved in perception, or mechanisms related to language (propositional mechanisms) The debate was that spatial/depictive representations were epiphenomenons (something that accompanies the mechanism but isnt the mechanism), and that the real mechanism underlying imagery is the propositional representation, which is that relationships can be represented by abstract symbols. Subjects answered detailed questions about their mental imagery more quickly when the image lled more of their visual eld.
