Chapter 7: Mental Imagery and Cognitive Maps

• Perception requires both bottom-up and top-down processing

o However, it is still possible to have sensory-related experiences without bottom-up input
registered by our sensory receptors

• The processes that give rise to our ability to create mental images are top-down in nature
o Mental imagery is knowledge-driven

Mental Imagery

• Also called imagery

• Refers to the mental representation of stimuli when those stimuli are not physically present in the
environment

• A mental image can be for any sensory experience

o Visual Imagery → Mental representation of visual stimuli
o Auditory Imagery → Mental representation of auditory stimuli

Overview of Mental Imagery

• Mental imagery is a crucial component of performance on the job

• Therapists often work with clients who have psychological disorders (PTSD, Depression, or Eating
Disorders), which they report intrusive, distressing mental images
o Therapists have successfully worked with clients by encouraging them to create alternative,
more positive images

• Spatial is extremely important in the STEM disciplines

o Training in spatial skills improves spatial performance for students of any age
Imagery Vs. Perception

Perception Mental Imagery

Sensory systems register sensory information Knowledge-driven

After your senses have registered information, Information stored in the long-term memory
features of the sensory stimulus are detected creates internal mental images

Bottom-up information is then processed in a more Takes about one-tenth of a second longer to
complex way until internal presentation arises create a visual image

Information is matched to other information stored Sometimes created when falling asleep or
in the long-term memory daydreaming

Once bottom-up information has been processed A hallmark of creativity and imagination and a
enough, perception occurs close relative to perception

History of Mental Imagery

• Wilhelm Wundt → Considered imagery to be an important of psychology

• John Watson → Opposed research on mental imagery since it can’t be connected to observation
o Watson had an argument that imagery did not exist
o American psychologists seldom studied imagery during the behaviorist period (1920-1960) as
a result

Mental Imagery Being Elusive and Inaccessible

• Compared with a topic such as verbal memory, the topic of mental imagery is elusive and
inaccessible

• Researchers used logic the attack the problem

o Supposed that a mental image does resemble a physical object; then people should make
mental images the same way they make judgments about a physical object
Mental Rotation

• Roger Shepard & Jacqueline Metzler → Made the experiment of mental rotation
o Asked eight dedicated participants to judge 1,600 pairs of line drawings similar above
o People’s decision time was strongly influenced by the amount of mental rotation required to
match a figure with its mate

• The dependent variable is reaction time, not accuracy

• The relationship between rotation and reaction is a straight line

• People’s decision time was strongly influenced by the amount of mental rotation
required to match a figure

• Researchers have explored the mental rotation issue more than any other topic connected with
imagery
o It will take you longer to rotate this physical object by 180 degrees than to rotate it only 90
degrees.
o In the same way, it will take you longer to rotate this mental image 180 degrees instead of 90
degrees

Subsequence Research on Mental Rotation

• People make judgments more quickly if they need to rotate a mental image just a short distance

• Kotaro Taked & Co-authors → Researched on influence on handedness of the mental-rotation

process
o Right-handers → Recognized a right hand faster than a left hand
o Left-handers → Recognized right and left hands equally quickly
o Both groups → Recognized upright pictures faster—and more upside-down pictures

• Age is not consistently correlated with other imagery skills (sense of direction or ability to scan
images) but is negatively correlated with mental rotation task

• Deaf individual fluency in ASL → Especially skilled in looking at an arrangement of objects in a scene
and mentally rotating it by 180 degrees
Cognitive Neuroscience Research on Mental Rotation Tasks

• The primary motor cortex requires hands-on experience or physically rotating a geometric figure

• The nature of instructions during physical and mental rotation influences the pattern of activation in
the cortex
o Right frontal and parietal lobes → Strongly activated when asked to “rotate the figure”
o Left temporal lobe and motor cortex → Activated when given a different perspective in the
instruction

• For people recovering from a stroke, watching the rotation of virtual-reality figures can provide
stimulation to the motor cortex

Imagery Debate

• Refers to a controversy whether mental images resemble perception or language

• Analog Code → A representation that closely resembles the physical object (analogy)
o Says that mental imagery is a close relative of perception
o Evident by people overlooking precise visual details when they look at an object

• Propositional Code → Abstract, language-like representation

o Storing a mental image gives the brain an unspecified nature of the verbal description of the
line and angles of an object
o Storage is neither visual nor spatial
o Abstract and does not resemble English or other languages

• Primary Visual Cortex → Activated when people work on tasks that require detailed visual imagery
o Favors the analog code

• Prosopagnosia → A person cannot recognize human faces visually, though they perceive other
objects relatively normally
o Favors the analog code

• Visual imagery activates about 70% and 90% of the same brain regions that are activated during
visual perception

Visual Imagery and Ambiguous Figures

• Stephen Reed → Tested people’s ability to decide whether a specific visual pattern was a portion of
a design that they had seen earlier
o Proposed that people sometimes store pictures as descriptions, using a kind of propositional
code

• It’s often easy to reverse a visual stimulus while you are looking at a physical picture that is
ambiguous
o In contrast, it’s usually more challenging to reverse a mental image
 • It is likely that people often use an analog code for simple figures and a propositional code for
complex figures
o We may have difficulty storing complex visual information in the analog code and making
accurate judgments about the mental images

Individual Differences in Mental Imagery

• Visualizers → Experience constructing strong mental images

• Verbalizers → Individuals rely less on mental images and more on verbal descriptions
o Represents biases that individuals have regarding the types of representations that tend to be
activated during cognitive processing

• Magnetoencephalography (MEG) → Stimulus-evoked neuronal activity is recorded via sensors

placed on the scalp
o Visualizers produced more activity in occipital regions of the cortex, regions that are strongly
implicated in processing visual information
o Verbalizers, produced more activation in areas often associated with linguistic processing,
such as frontal cortical areas

Factors Influencing Visual Imagery

• Distance and Shape Effects → People took a long time to scan the distance between two widely
separated points on a mental image of a map they created
o There is a linear relationship between the distance to be scanned in a mental image and the
amount of time required to scan the distance
o High-imagery participants were able to make decisions about distance much more quickly
o People’s judgments about the shape of mental images are similar to their judgments about
the shape of physical stimuli
o When angles are very different from each other, people respond more quickly
o Evidence gives strong support for analog codes

• Visual Imagery and Interference → A mental image can interfere with an actual physical image
o Visual imagery can interfere with visual perception
o In detecting a stimulus, more problems are caused when a mental image is in the same
sensory mode

• Visual Imagery and Other Vision-Like Processes → People see a visual target more accurately if the
target has lines on each side (masking effect)
o Studies on the masking effect have been criticized due to possible demand characteristics
o However, the masking effect is unknown to someone who has not completed a course in
perception
o Visual imagery can produce the masking effect, just as visual perception can produce it too
o People have good acuity for mental images visualized in the center of the retina rather than
 the periphery

• Gender Comparison in Spatial Ability → Gender differences in cognitive abilities are just small
(proven by meta-analysis)
o There are gender similarities in verbal and math ability
o Small gender differences in spatial visualization
o Moderate gender differences in spatial perception
o Males are more likely to earn higher scores than a group of females in mental rotation (due
to toys and sports)
o Gender differences disappear when the instructions of the task are changed, or if people
receive training on spatial skills

Auditory Imagery

• Our mental representation of sound when these sounds are not physically present

• We can typically identify a variety of “environmental sounds” even though we might not use that
particular term

• People reported higher imagery ratings for visual imagery than for auditory imagery

Auditory Imagery and Pitch

• Pitch → Characteristic of a sound that can be arranged on a scale from low to high
o The distance between the two actual tones is indeed correlated with the distance between
the two imaged tones

Auditory Imagery and Pitch

• Timbre → The sound quality of a tone

o Ratings for timbre perception and timbre imagery were highly correlated with each other
o Cognitive representations of the timbre of an actual musical instrument are quite similar to the
cognitive representations of the timbre of imagined musical instruments
Cognitive Maps

• A mental representation of geographic information, including the environment that surrounds us

• Our cognitive maps represent areas that are too large to be seen in a single glance

• We create a cognitive map by integrating information that we have acquired from many successive
views

• Spatial Cognition → A significant, interdisciplinary topic that research on cognitive maps is a part of,
refers to 3 categories:
o Our thoughts about cognitive maps
o How do we remember the world we navigate
o How do we keep track of objects in a spatial array

• Individual differences in spatial cognition skills are quite large; however, people tend to be accurate
in judging their ability to find their way to unfamiliar locations
o These individual differences in spatial cognition are correlated with people’s scores on tests of
the visuospatial sketchpad
o Spatial-cognition scores are also correlated with performance on spatial tasks
o People with poor spatial skills are still capable of improving their performance

• Heuristics → A general problem-solving strategy that usually produces correct solutions but not
always
o In making judgments about cognitive maps, heuristics are used and tend to show systematic
distortions in shape, distance, and relative positions
O Mistakes reflect a tendency to base our judgments on variables that are usually relevant and
a tendency to judge our environment as being more well-organized and orderly than it is

Distance and Shape Effects on Cognitive Maps

• Number of Intervening Cities → The number of intervening cities had a clear-cut influence on
distance estimates
O Thorndyke → Made one of the first systematic studies about distance in cognitive maps
O The error is consistent with heuristics with randomly distributed cities throughout a region, and
two sites would be perceived to be closer if there are no intervening cities between them

• Category Membership → People tend to shift the location of a site closer to other sites that belong
to the same category
O People show a more considerable distortion when they estimate large-scale distances
O They are reluctant to say that two bulding are near each other if they are on different sides of
an “invisible border”
O Border Bias → People estimate that the distance between two specific locations is larger if
they are on different sides of a geographic border
O Same-category Heuristic → The thought that two cities are closer together if they are in the
same state instead in adjacent states
 • Landmark Effect → General tendency to provide shorter estimates when traveling to a landmark

• Shape → We tend to construct cognitive maps in which shapes are more regular than they are in
reality
O 90-degree-angle-heuristic → People represent angles in a mental map as being closer to 90
degrees than they are

• Relative Position Effects → We use heuristics when we represent relative positions in our mental maps
O Rotation Heuristic → We remember slightly tilted geographic structures as being more
vertical or more horizontal

• Requires rotating a single coastline

O Alignment Heuristic → We remember a series of geographic structures as being arranged in a
straighter line than they are

• Requires lining up several separate countries, buildings, or other figures

O When our mental maps rely too strongly on these heuristics, we miss the essential details

Spatial Framework Model

• Emphasizes that the above-below spatial dimension is critical in our thinking, the front-back
dimension is moderately important, and the right-left dimension is least important
O Above-Below Dimension → The vertical dimension is correlated with gravity, and the vertical
dimension on an upright human body is physically asymmetrical
O Front-Back Dimension → Second most prominent as we usually interact with objects in front of
us more easily than with objects in back of us
O Right-Left Dimension → Least prominent as it is not correlated with gravity, and we usually
perceive objects equally well, whether they are on the right or the left

• Most of us show minor preferences for our right or left hand when we manipulate objects

• Right-left decisions take longer than either above-below or front-back decisions

Situated Cognition Approach

• We make use of helpful information in the immediate environment or situation. Therefore, our
knowledge depends on the context that surrounds us

• Spatial thinking is vitally important for humans.

O You need to know where to go to find food, water, and shelter, and you need to find your
way back home