PSY BEH 11B Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Mental Rotation, Mental Process, Hemispatial Neglect
10 Nov 2015
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Document Summary
Mental representations and visual imagery / mind reading. Overview: nature of mental representations, analogical vs. symbolic representations, relationship between imagery and perception, distortions in mental maps, mind reading, predicting what somebody is thinking of based on brain activity. Nature of mental representations: analog vs. propositional debate, analog representations: the representation has the same structure as the thing represented, symbolic / propositional representation: a sentence-like description of the image, non-spatial. Analog images vs. propositions: the can is on the box. The can is black: analog: visualize as a picture, proposition: abstract properties, relationships. Imagery and analog representation: most studies on imagery argue for analog representations (e. g. mental rotation, brain imaging studies) yet mental images are not processed exactly the same as visual images. If the mechanisms used to perceive stimuli are also used to generate mental images, then : mental images should be quasi pictorial, mental images should activate some of the brain areas involved with visual processing.
