Chapter 11: Visual Knowledge; By: Jenny Tran

Introspection

study of mental imagery, participants report their own mental contents

Poor research

Subjective

translating subjective into verbal report, no guarantee everyone will translate the same way

same imagery skill but varied in describing their experience

Chronometric studies

"Time Measuring"

examine how fast people make judgements

write a paragraph describing cat

draw a picture of a cat

head is prominent

whiskers and claw prominent

what information is included and prominent depends on mode of presentation

Image Scanning studies

participants asked to memorize fictional map, imagine black speck moving from landmark to another

double scanning distance for double the distance, same results when asked to zoom in/out

travel in image world resembles travel in actual world

mental rotation tasks

showed 2 different shapes from 1 different perspective

amount of imagined rotation depends on how much rotation is needed

imagined movements resemble actual movements

people have no trouble rotating with depth

Unilateral Neglect Syndrome

shown picture, only see the right side of it

asked to read a word, only reads right half of it

asked to visualize a plaza in the cite and list buildings in view

can only right side

Imagery

Visual Imagery

relies on brain areas need for vision

Spatial

relies on different areas of brain

Patient L.H

brain damage, difficult in tasks requiring judgments about visual appearance

performed well on mental rotation tasks

Individual Differences

depends on individual ability level

one could be a good visualizer but poor spatializer

people with vivid imagery report images as picture like

there is a relationship between image vividness and how well they perform on tasks that require visual image

Eidetic Memory

aka photographic memory

very rare

most people who claim they do -> in reality they do not; they just use memory strategies like mnemonics

Dual Coding

imagined materials will be double represented in memory (word and picture)

access to symbolic memory easier if cue is a word

access to image-based easier with a picture

Primacy and recency, encoding specificity, schemata, spreading activation, familiarity

Memory Errors in Long Term Memory

Schemata retrieval

rarely noticed changes that fit into schema

noticed changes in items not in schema, more likely to recall

Boundary Extension

people include more details

ex: picture with fence

people extend the fence to show its pointy (in reality its round)