PSYC10003 Lecture Notes - Lecture 33: Stephen Kosslyn, Mental Rotation, Benzene
10. Mental Imagery
Mental Images
• We experience the world via perception
• 19th century chemist Kekule reported that the structure of benzene came to him as a visual image in a
dream
• there is evidence for these mental images – seeig ith the id’s ee
• oe uestio is hethe the ae eal
• Behaiouists deied thei eistee as upoe
• Early cognitive psychologists found pairs of concrete nouns are remembered more easily than abstract
nouns
• Conceptual-peg hypothesis: concreat nounts create a mental image to hag oto
Do mental images and perception shared the same mechanisms?
• Mental rotation experiments ask whether the manipulation of images is similar to the manipulation of
real objects
• Shepard & Metzler (1971)
o How long does it take to rotate images in the mind?
o Do e aipulate iages i ou id, as e ould aipulate eal ojets?
o Results: took longer to rotate images with increasing angle between the objects to rotate
o ∴ the rotation speed follows real-world physical properties of the stimuli
o ∴ e ight hae eal iages i ou id that e otate ≈ 60° pe seod
Stephen Kosslyn
• wanted to show mental images are real
• visual scanning experiments
o participants scan images then create mental image in their mind
o participants asked to focus on one part of boat (eg. At the anchor)
o then asked questions about boat (eg. Was there a cabin? Motor?)
o found participants longer to make decision the farther away the crucial part was from the initial
standing point
• similar experiment: island
o peso had to tael to aious loatios ad asked uestios, sae esults as peious
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