Mental Imagery
What is mental imagery?
Mental imagery is the mental representation of stimuli that are not physically present.
What is mental rotation?
Mental rotation is the ability to rotate objects mentally in order to compare them.
What is auditory imagery?
Auditory imagery is imagining sounds that are not physically present.
What is a cognitive map?
A cognitive map is a mental representation of geographic space and spatial relationships.
What is a heuristic?
A heuristic is a mental shortcut used to solve problems quickly.
What types of mental imagery exist?
The two main types are visual imagery (imagining objects or scenes) and auditory imagery (imagining sounds).
Who conducted the famous mental rotation study?
Shepard and Metzler (1971).
What is pitch?
itch is how high or low a sound is.
Why are cognitive maps useful?
They help people navigate environments and remember locations.
What is Symmetry heuristic?
Tendency to remember figures as more symmetrical than they really are
How is mental imagery different from perception?
Perception uses actual sensory input, while mental imagery uses information stored in memory.
What relationship exists between rotation angle and reaction time?
Reaction time increases as the angle of rotation increases.
What is timbre?
Timbre is the quality of a sound that distinguishes different instruments or voices.
What is spatial cognition?
Spatial cognition refers to how people think about locations, objects, and spatial relationships.
What is the landmark effect?
People estimate distances to landmarks as shorter than distances to less important locations.
Why is mental imagery difficult to study scientifically?
Because mental images cannot be directly observed, researchers must measure them indirectly through behavior and reaction time.
What does the mental rotation study suggest about how people process images?
It suggests people mentally manipulate images similarly to real objects.
What did research on pitch imagery show?
People take longer to imagine large pitch differences than small ones.
Why are cognitive maps sometimes inaccurate?
Because people rely on heuristics that simplify spatial information.
What is the rotation heuristic?
It is the tendency to remember maps or objects as more vertical or horizontal than they actually are.
Explain how mental imagery helps in real-life problem solving.
Mental imagery helps people visualize objects or situations, such as planning furniture placement or imagining routes before traveling.
Why does mental rotation research support the analog theory of imagery?
Because the time needed to rotate mental images matches the physical rotation process, indicating images preserve spatial properties.
How does auditory imagery relate to real auditory perception?
Research shows that imagined sounds activate cognitive processes similar to hearing real sounds.
Explain how cognitive maps help navigation.
They allow people to estimate distances, directions, and relationships between places using stored spatial knowledge.
How can heuristics distort cognitive maps?
Heuristics simplify spatial information but can cause systematic errors in distance, direction, and alignment judgments.