Chapter 1. Mental Imagery

1.1 Introduction

This experiment replicates work done by Kosslyn (1975) on the topic of mental imagery. Kosslyn was a proponent of the quasi-pictorial theory of mental imagery, which is allied with the more general analog theory of imagery: images are stored in the mind as pictures rather than as a set of instructions for assembling an image. The idea that we store a set of instructions rather than an image is the propositional theory of imagery. Kosslyn (1975) demonstrated that it is more difficult to access information about smaller images in much the same way that it is more difficult to make determinations about smaller visual stimuli. Kosslyn also performed neuroscience research on the topic of mental imagery. He, as well as others, was able to determine that some of the same structures were activated in both visual perception and mental imagery studies.

Kosslyn, S. (1975). Information representation in visual images. Cognitive Psychology, 7(3), 341-370.

Paivio, A. (1969). Mental imagery in associative learning and memory. Psychological Review, 76(3), 241-263.

Pylyshyn, Z. (1981). The imagery debate: analogue media versus tacit knowledge. Psychological Review, 88(1), 16-45.

1.2 Experiment Setup

Figure 1.1

1.3 Instructions

You will need to press the space bar to begin the experiment. At the beginning of each trial, you will see the names of two animals that you will create mental images of. There will always be two animals; one will always be either an elephant or a fly. The other animal in the pair will be the target animal. After a brief period in which you should create an image of the two specified animals side-by-side, you will hear a property of an animal (for example, legs) and you will need to report whether that property exists in the target animal.

1.4 Experiment

Figure 1.2

1.5 Results

Figure 1.3

1.6 Quiz