PSYC 2501 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Mental Chronometry, Mental Rotation, Cognitive Revolution
26 Apr 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Visual imagery
Friday, April 13, 2018
11:13 AM
• Mental vs visual imagery
o Mental imagery
• Ability to recreate the sensory world in absence of physical stimulus
o Visual imagery
• Seeing in the absence of visual input
• A brief history
o Imageless-thought debate (early 1900s)
• Is thought possible without visual images?
o Behaviorism (1920-1950)
• Can't study mental imagery reliability
o Cognitive revolution (1950s)
o Development of ways to study visual imagery
• Mental chronometry
▪ The time it takes to perform certain cognitive tasks (Reaction time)
o Mental rotation experiment
• Reaction time increased with increase in degree of rotation which
implies we mentally rotate the objects
• Led researchers to believe we think about mental images much like we
think about real images
• Indicates a parallel between perception and imagery
o Imagery and perception: Do they share the same mechanisms
• Comparing imagery and perception
▪ Kosslyn's mental scanning experiments
• Map scanning
• Mentally travelling at same speed as would if eyes
scanning map
• As distance increases, reaction time increases
• Evidence that imagery and perception may use the same
kind of cognitive processes
• Size in visual field
• Harder to see if object farther away
• See details better if imagined object is closer to you
• Again suggests that mental imagery works a lot like
perception
• Mental-walk task
• Participants had to move closer to smaller animals than
larger animals
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