1
Q
What is mental imagery?
A
- allows us to anticipate how things will look in the future or from alternative perspectives
- giving/recieving directions
- reaaranging furniture
- can happen with all senses
- vision and hearing have received the most attention in research
2
Q
Mental Rotation expt
A
- normal or reversed angle of F or R (angle of increments 4 degrees)
- DV= reaction time for correct responses
- the more the angle is away from 0 the more time we need to process it back to zero
- symmetric letters won’t work for the experiment
3
Q
Mental rotation #2
A
- stimuli= pairs of tetris like objects
- angular dispairity between objects
- task- are they identical or different?
- DV= RT for correct “identical traits”
4
Q
MR conclusions
A
- Ps report mentally rotating objects in their mind
- mental rotation is analogous to physical rotation
5
Q
Mental Scanning with Maps
A
- Ps studied map of island until they memorized landmarks and physical location
- map removed from sight
- task- Ps asked to focus on a landmark and to describe characteristics
- engage in mental imagery to answer
- the time taken to answer questions about the 2nd landmark was positively correlated with its distance from the first
- people mentally travel from 1 to 2
6
Q
fMRI and mental imagery
A
- parietal acivation during mental rotation
- locating an object in space
- temporal activation when imagining an object’s properties
7
Q
Temporal FFA/PPA
A
- perception trials= Ps viewed pics of famous faces or familiar places
- imagery trials= Ps heard names of famous faces/ places and instructed to form vivis mental image
- FFA= more facial activation
- PP= more location activation
- weaker activation of imagining vs percieving
