Mental Imagery and Cognitive Maps

Margaret W. Matlin, Cognition, 8eOutlineChapter 7Page 1 of 12

CHAPTER 7

Chapter Introduction

mental imagery

visual imagery

auditory imagery

perception vs. imagery

visual imagery vs. auditory, olfactory, touch, and taste imagery

STEM disciplines

mental imagery in the history of psychology

The Characteristics of Visual Imagery

not directly observable
fades quickly

imagery debate

perception vs. language
analog code (depictive representation/pictorial representation)
propositional code (descriptive representation)

How to study mental imagery?

If a mental image resembles a physical object, then people should make judgments about a mental image in the same way that they make judgments about the corresponding physical object.

In Depth: Visual Imagery and Rotation

Shepard and Metzler's Research

Demonstration 7.2
same/different task using pairs of line drawings
two- vs. three-dimensions
reaction time to decide same/different
Decision time is influenced by the amount of rotation required to match the figures.
Large rotations take more time.

Subsequent Research on Mental Rotation

Research with other stimuli (e.g., letters of the alphabet) also finds clear relationship between amount of rotation and reaction time.

Takeda and coauthors (2010)

handedness
upright vs. upside-down pictures

Other research

age
American Sign Language (ASL)

Overall strong support for the analog-coding approach

Cognitive Neuroscience Research on Mental Rotation Tasks

Kosslyn, Thompson and coauthors (2001)

rotate geometric figures with hands vs. watch an electric motor rotate the figures
perform Shepard and Metzler same/different task rotating the figures mentally
PET scan—participants who had rotated the original geometric figure with their hands, now showed activity in the primary motor cortex; participants who only watched did not

Role of Instructions

standard instructions activated the right frontal lobes and parietal lobes
"rotate self" instructions activated the left temporal lobe and a different part of the motor cortex

Implications for people recovering from a stroke

Visual Imagery and Distance

Stephen Kosslyn

time to scan the distance between two points in a mental image

experimenter expectancy

Visual Imagery and Shape

Paivio (1978)

hands on imaginary clock
high-imagery vs. low-imagery participants

Shepard and Chipman (1970)

more complex shapes
U.S. states

Conclusions About The Characteristics of Mental Images (so far)

When people rotate a visual image, a large rotation takes them longer, just as they take longer when making a large rotation with a physical stimulus.
People make distance judgments in a similar fashion for mental images and physical stimuli.
People make decisions about shape in a similar fashion for mental images and physical stimuli; this conclusion holds true for both simple shapes (angles formed by hands on a clock) and complex shapes (geographic regions, like Colorado or West Virginia).

Visual Imagery and Interference

Mental imagery can interfere with visual perception.

Segal and Fusella (1970)

create visual image
detect physical stimulus
People had more problems detecting the physical stimulus when the image and the physical stimulus were in the same sensory mode.

Mast and colleagues (1999)

Imagined lines and real lines produced similar distortions in participants' judgments about the orientation of the line segment.

Visual Imagery and Ambiguous Figures

Demonstration 7.3

When creating a mental image of an ambiguous figure, people sometimes use analog codes and sometimes use propositional codes.

Reed (1974)

decide whether a pattern is a portion of a design seen earlier
Chance performance indicated that people could not have stored mental pictures.
People must store these pictures as descriptions, in propositional codes.

Chambers and Reisberg (1985)

form mental image of ambiguous figure (e.g., the rabbit-duck figure)
ask participants to provide reinterpretation of ambiguous figure
draw figure from memory
try to reinterpret physical stimulus
strong verbal propositional code can dominate over an analog code
It's easy to reverse an image while you are looking at an ambiguous physical picture, but reversing a mental image is difficult.

Analog vs. Propositional codes

simple vs. complex figures

Finke and colleagues (1989)

Demonstration 7.4
combine mental images
identify new interpretations
locate similar, unanticipated shapes in mental images

People create mental images using both propositional and analog codes.

Visual Imagery and Other Vision-Like Processes

Ishai and Sagi (1995)

masking effect
demand characteristics
acuity

Explanations for Visual Imagery

The Imagery Debate

Analog Perspective

create a mental image of an object that closely resembles the actual, perceptual image on your retina
responses to mental images are frequently similar to responses to physical objects
majority of research supports this position
no one argues that vision and mental imagery are identical

Propositional Perspective

mental images stored in an abstract, language-like form that does not physically resemble the original stimulus

Pylyshyn

mental images not a necessary component of imagery
differences between perceptual experiences and mental images

Most researchers favor an analog code.

For some stimuli and several specific tasks, people may use a propositional code.

Neuroscience Research Comparing Visual Imagery and Visual Perception

Mental rotation tasks activate parts of the brain's temporal lobe, as well as the motor cortex.

Mental imagery relies exclusively on top-down processing.

Visual perception activates the rods and cones in the retina.

It takes about 1/10 of a second longer to create a visual image than to register a visual perception.

Kosslyn (2004)

Visual imagery activates 70-90% of the same brain regions that are activated during visual perception.
Brain damage in the most basic region of the visual cortex leads to parallel problems in both visual perception and visual imagery.
Some individuals with brain damage cannot distinguish between characteristics in visual perception and visual imagery.
People with prosopagnosia cannot use mental imagery to distinguish between faces.

Similarity between visual imagery and visual perception cannot be explained by demand characteristics.

Individual Differences: Gender Comparisons in Spatial Ability

Most gender differences in cognitive abilities are small.

meta-analysis

a statistical method for combining numerous studies on a single topic
effect size (d)
meta-analyses of gender differences in verbal ability find effect sizes "close to zero" or "small"; gender similarities
meta-analyses of gender differences in mathematical ability find effect sizes "close to zero"; gender similarities
meta-analyses of gender differences in spatial ability find effect sizes ranging from "small" to "large"

Spatial ability represents several different skills.

spatial visualization: "small" gender differences
spatial perception: "moderate" gender differences
mental rotation: "moderate" to "large" gender differences

What do these differences mean?

some studies report no gender differences
effects of task instructions
effects of training
experiences with toys and sports that emphasize spatial skills

This one area of cognitive gender differences can be modified by providing girls with experience in spatial activities.

The Characteristics of Auditory Imagery

auditory imagery

the mental representation of sounds when the sounds are not physically present
examples: laughter, song, car sounds, animals
importance of auditory processes
vividness

Auditory Imagery and Pitch

pitch—a characteristic of a sound stimulus that can be arranged on a scale from low to high

Intons-Peterson and coauthors (1992)

"traveling" the distance between two auditory stimuli
cat purring, door slamming, police siren
The distance between two actual tones is correlated with the distance between the two imagined tones.

Auditory Imagery and Timbre

timbre—a characteristic of sound describing the quality of a tone (e.g., flute vs. trumpet)

Halpern and coauthors (2004)

auditory imagery for the timbre of musical instruments
young adults with musical training
similarity ratings
perception condition vs. imagined condition
ratings for timbre perception and timbre imagery are highly correlated
Cognitive representations for the timbre of actual musical instruments were quite similar to the cognitive representation for the timbre of the imagined musical instruments.

Cognitive Maps

cognitive map

mental representation of geographic information, including the environment that surrounds us
relationships among objects

Background Information About Cognitive Maps

Characteristics

homes, neighborhoods, cities, countries
used for areas too large to be seen in a single glance
real-world settings
ecological validity

spatial cognition

our thoughts about cognitive maps
remembering the world we navigate
keeping track of objects in a spatial array
interdisciplinary
applied topics
individual differences

Roskos-Ewaldsen and colleagues (1998)

Demonstration 7.5: Learning from a Map
survey knowledge—the relationship among locations that we acquire by directly learning a map or by repeatedly exploring an environment
orientation of map
Judgments are easier when your mental map and the physical map have matching orientations.

Cognitive maps are generally accurate.

Errors can be traced to rational strategiesthat are based onsystematic distortions of reality.

heuristic—general problem-solving strategy that usually produces a correct solution . . . but not always

Cognitive Maps and Distance

Estimating the distance between two known points.

Often distorted by:

number of intervening cities
category membership
landmarks

Distance Estimates and Number of Intervening Cities

Thorndyke (1981)

study map of hypothetical region until you can reproduce it
0, 1, 2, or 3 other cities along the route between two cities
estimate the distance between specified pairs of cities
The number of intervening cities had a clear-cut influence on distance estimates.

Distance Estimates and Category Membership

The categories we create can have a large influence on our distance estimates.

Hirtle and Mascolo (1986)

learn hypothetical map of a town
estimate distance between pairs of locations
People tended to shift each location closer to other sites that belonged to the same category (e.g., government buildings).

Friedman and colleagues

North American cities
students from Canada, United States, Mexico
international borders

Mishra & Mishra (2010)—border bias

vacation home in Oregon or Washington
earthquake
When people hear about an earthquake, they prefer to select a home in a different state, rather than a home that is equally close, but in the same state as the earthquake.

Cognitive Maps and Distance (continued)

Distance Estimates and Landmarks

landmark effect—general tendency to provide shorter distance estimates when traveling to a landmark, rather than a nonlandmark

McNamara and Diwadker (1997)

memorize map containing pictures of objects
landmarks and non-landmarks
estimate distance between various pairs of objects
asymmetry in distance estimates, consistent with the landmark effect
Prominent destinations seem closer than less important destinations.

Cognitive Maps and Shape

We tend to construct cognitive maps in which the shapes are more regular than they are in reality.

Angles

Moar and Bower (1983)

cognitive maps of Cambridge, England
estimates for the angles formed by the intersection of two streets
tendency to "regularize" the angles so that they were more like 90-degree angles

90-degree-angle heuristic—represent angles on a map as being closer to 90 degrees than they really are

Curves

symmetry heuristic—We remember figures as being more symmetrical and regular than they truly are.

Cognitive Maps and Relative Position

Stevens and Coupe (1978)—east/west and north/south judgments of cities

Tversky—We use heuristics when we represent relative positions in our mental maps.

1.We remember a slightly tilted geographic structure as being either more vertical or more horizontal than it really is (the rotation heuristic).

2.We remember a series of geographic structures as being arranged in a straighter line than they really are (the alignment heuristic).

Cognitive Maps and Relative Position (continued)

The Rotation Heuristic

A figure that is slightly tilted will be remembered as being either more vertical or more horizontal than it really is.

Example: San Diego or Reno?; California coastline mentally rotated to seem more vertical than it is in reality

Tversky (1981)

mental maps for San Francisco Bay area
69% of students showed evidence of the rotation heuristic

cross-cultural evidence

The rotation heuristic involves rotating a single coastline, country, building, or other figure.

The Alignment Heuristic

A series of separate geographic structures will be remembered as being more lined up than they really are.

Example: Rome or Philadelphia?; The United States and Europe get mentally mis-aligned to be at the same latitude.

Tversky (1981)

pairs of cities
which city is north (or east) of the other?
Many students showed a consistent tendency to use the alignment heuristic.

Cognitive maps are especially likely to be biased when northern cities in North America are compared to southern cities in Europe.

The alignment heuristic involves lining up several separate countries, buildings, or other figures in a straight row.

Both heuristics encourage the construction of cognitive maps that are more orderly and schematic than geographic reality.

Heuristics make sense, but can cause us to miss important details and fail to pay attention to bottom-up information.

Creating a Cognitive Map

creating a cognitive map from descriptions or directions
integrate information from separate statements

Franklin and Tversky's Research

verbal descriptions of ten different scenes
five objects in each scene
imagine facing one of the objects; specify which object is located in each of several directions
short response times to answer which objects were above and below
People required longer to decide which objects were ahead or behind.
Response times were even longer to decide which objects were to the right or to the left.

The Spatial Framework Model

spatial framework model—emphasizes that the above-below spatial dimension is especially important in our thinking, the front-back dimension is moderately important, and the right-left dimension is least important

1.The vertical dimension is correlated with gravity.

2.The vertical dimension on an upright human’s body is physically asymmetric.

When processing directions on a physical map, people make north-south (above-below) decisions significantly faster than east-west (right-left) decisions.

Our cognitive maps reveal certain biases based on our long-term interactions with our bodies and with the physical properties of the external world.

The Situated Cognition Approach

People make use of helpful information in the immediate environment or situation.
Knowledge depends on the surrounding context.
What we know depends on the situation that we are in.

Central Importance of Spatial Thinking

language
use spatial diagrams to represent relationships