Chapter 7 - Mental Imagery and Cognitive Maps

The Situated Cognition Approach

- According to the 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 - situated cognition is important when we create mental maps (this chapter), form concepts (Chapter 8), and solve problems

The Spatial Framework Model

- Franklin and Tversky - spatial framework model emphasizes that the above-below spatial dimension is especially important in our thinking, the front-back dimension is moderately important, and the right-left dimension is least important. - When we are in a typical upright position, the vertical (above-below) dimension is especially important for two reasons: The vertical dimension is correlated with gravity, neither of the other two dimensions has this advantage. Gravity has an important asymmetric effect on the world we perceive; objects fall downward, not upward. Because of its association with gravity, the above-below dimension should be particularly important and thus particularly accessible. (Notice, then, that this asymmetry is "good," because we make decisions more quickly.) The vertical dimension on an upright human's body is physically asymmetric. That is, the top (head) and the bottom (feet) are very easy to tell apart, and so we do not confuse them with each other. The next most prominent dimension is the front-back dimension. When we are upright, the front-back dimension is not correlated with gravity. However, we usually interact with objects in front of us more easily than with objects in back of us, introducing an asymmetry. Also, a human's front half is not symmetric with the back half, again making it easy to distinguish between front and back. These two characteristics lead to judgment times for the front-back dimension that are fairly fast, although not as fast as for the above-below dimension. least-prominent dimension is right-left. This dimension 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. However, this dimension does not have the degree of asymmetry we find for the front-back dimension. Finally, your right half is roughly symmetrical with your left half. You can probably remember occasions when you confused your right hand with your left hand, or when you told someone to turn left when you meant right. Apparently, we need additional processing time to ensure that we do not make this error. Therefore, right-left decisions take longer than either above-below or front-back decisions, consistent with other research

Distance Estimates and Category Membership

- Hirtle and Mascolo (1986) showed participants a hypothetical map of a town, and they learned the locations on the map. Then the map was removed, and people estimated the distance between pairs of locations. The results showed that people tended to shift each location closer to other sites that belonged to the same category. For example, people typically remembered the courthouse as being close to the police station and other government buildings. However, these shifts did not occur for members of different categories. For instance, people did not move the courthouse closer to the golf course. - People show a similar distortion when they estimate large-scale distances. For instance, Friedman and her colleagues asked college students to estimate the distance between various North American cities . Students from Canada, the United States, and Mexico judged that distances were greater when they were separated by an international border. - border bias, people estimate that the distance between two specific locations is larger if they are on different sides of a geographic border, compared to two locations on the same side of that border.

Creating a Cognitive Map

- In a classic study, Nancy Franklin and Barbara Tversky (1990) presented verbal descriptions of 10 different scenes, such as a barn or a hotel lobby, for example, "You are at the Jefferson Plaza Hotel...." Each description mentioned five objects located in plausible positions in relation to the observer (above, below, in front, in back, to the left side, or to the right side). The description mentioned only five objects, so that the memory load would not be overwhelming. After the participants had read each description, they were instructed to imagine that they were turning around to face a different object. They were then asked to specify which object was located in each of several directions. (For example, which object is "above your head"?) In all cases, the researchers measured how long the participant took to respond to the question. Franklin and Tversky were especially interested in discovering whether response time depended upon the location of the object that was being tested. Do we make all those decisions equally quickly? These researchers found that people could rapidly answer which objects were above or below; their reaction times were short for these judgments. People required somewhat longer to decide which objects were ahead or behind. Furthermore, they took even longer to decide which objects were to the right or to the left. In all these studies, people judged the vertical dimension more quickly than ahead-behind or left-right dimensions. Franklin and Tversky (1990) also asked the participants to describe how they thought they had performed the task. All participants reported that they had constructed images of the environment as they were reading. Most of them also reported that they had constructed imagery that represented their own point of view as an observer of the scene.

Distance and Shape Effects on Cognitive Maps

- People's distance estimates are often distorted by factors such as (1) the number of intervening cities, (2) category membership, and (3) whether their destination is a landmark.

Auditory Imagery and Pitch

- Pitch is a characteristic of a sound stimulus that can be arranged on a scale from low to high - Intons-Peterson and her coauthors examined how quickly people could "travel" the distance between two auditory stimuli that differ in pitch. students needed about 4 seconds to travel that relatively short auditory distance. participants needed about 6 seconds to travel this relatively long distance. - In the case of pitch, the distance between the two actual tones is indeed correlated with the distance between the two imagined tones.

Distance Estimates and Number of Intervening Cities

- Thorndyke constructed a map of a hypothetical geographic region with cities distributed throughout the map. Between any two cities on the map, there were 0, 1, 2, or 3 other cities along the route. Participants studied the map until they could accurately reconstruct it. Then they estimated the distance between specified pairs of cities. -when the cities were really 300 miles apart on this map, people estimated that they were only 280 miles apart when there were no intervening cities. In contrast, these target cities were estimated to be 350 miles apart with three intervening cities. Notice that this error is consistent with the concept of heuristics. If cities are randomly distributed throughout a region, two cities are usually closer together when there are no intervening cities between them. In contrast, two cities are likely to be further apart when there are three intervening cities.

Auditory Imagery and Timbre

- Timbre describes the sound quality of a tone. - Andrea Halpern Research: The results showed that the ratings for timbre perception and for timbre imagery were highly correlated with each other (r=.84)r=.84. In other words, the participants showed that their cognitive representation for the timbre of an actual musical instrument is quite similar to the cognitive representation for the timbre of an imagined musical instrument.

Cognitive Maps

- a cognitive map is a mental representation of geographic information, including the environment that surrounds us - first two sections of this chapter emphasize our mental representations of sights and sounds. In contrast, this third section emphasizes our mental images of the relationships among objects, such as buildings on your college campus. - the research on cognitive maps emphasizes real-world settings, as well as high ecological validity. - Research on cognitive maps is part of a larger topic called SPATIAL COGNITION. Spatial cognition primarily refers to three cognitive activities: (1) our thoughts about cognitive maps; (2) how we remember the world we navigate; and (3) how we keep track of objects in a spatial array - your metacognition about your spatial ability may be reasonably correct - individual differences in spatial cognition are correlated with people's scores on tests of the visuospatial sketchpad - Spatial-cognition scores are also correlated with performance on the spatial tasks: ex: people who are good at mental rotation are more skilled than others in using maps to find a particular location - A heuristic (pronounced "hyoo-riss-tick") is a general problem-solving strategy that usually produces a correct solution ... but not always. As you will see, people often use heuristics in making judgments about cognitive maps. As a result, they tend to show systematic distortions in distance, shape, and relative position.

The Alignment Heuristic

- alignment heuristic, a series of separate geographic structures will be remembered as being more lined up than they really are

Auditory Imagery

- auditory imagery is our mental representation of sounds when these sounds are not physically present. - two topics that have clear implications for mental imagery: (1) auditory imagery and pitch and (2) auditory imagery and timbre.

Distance Estimates and Landmarks

- landmark effect, which is the general tendency to provide shorter estimates when traveling to a landmark—an important geographical location—rather than a nonlandmark - Prominent destinations apparently seem closer than less-important destinations.

The Rotation Heuristic

- rotation heuristic, a figure that is slightly tilted will be remembered as being either more vertical or more horizontal than it really is - the coastline of California is obviously slanted. When we use the rotation heuristic for our cognitive map of California, we make the orientation more vertical by rotating the coastline in a clockwise fashion. Therefore, if your cognitive map reflects the distorting effects of the rotation heuristic, you will conclude (erroneously) that San Diego is west of Reno. the rotation heuristic requires rotating a single coastline, country, building, or other figure in a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion so that its border is oriented in a nearly vertical or a nearly horizontal direction. In contrast, the alignment heuristic requires lining up several separate countries, buildings, or other figures in a straight row. Both heuristics are similar, however, because they encourage us to construct cognitive maps that are more orderly and schematic than geographic reality.

Cognitive Maps and Shape

- we tend to construct cognitive maps in which the shapes are more regular than they are in reality. - Moar and Bower asked people to estimate the angles formed by the intersection of two streets, without using a map. The participants showed a clear tendency to "regularize" the angles so that they were more like 90-degree angles. For example, three intersections in Cambridge had "real" angles of 67, 63, and 50 degrees. However, people estimated these same angles to be an average of 84, 78, and 88 degrees. As you may recall, the sum of the angles in a triangle should be 180 degrees, but in this study, the sum of the estimated angles was 250 degrees. Furthermore, this study showed that seven of the nine angles were significantly biased in the direction of a 90-degree angle. - When people use the 90-DEGREE-ANGLE HEURISTIC, they represent angles in a mental map as being closer to 90 degrees than they really are.

Relative Position Effects on Cognitive Maps

Barbara Tversky (1981, 1998) points out that we use heuristics when we represent relative positions in our mental maps—just as we use heuristics to represent the angles of intersecting streets as being close to 90-degree angles, and just as we represent curves as being symmetrical. Tversky points out that these heuristics encourage two kinds of errors: 1. We remember a slightly tilted geographic structure as being either more vertical or more horizontal than it really is (the rotation heuristic). 2. We remember a series of geographic structures as being arranged in a straighter line than they really are (the alignment heuristic).

prosopagnosia

cannot recognize human faces visually, though they perceive other objects relatively normally (Farah, 2004). These individuals also have comparable problems in creating visual imagery for faces visual imagery activates between about 70% and 90% of the same brain regions that are activated during visual perception It seems likely that people often use an analog code when they are thinking about fairly simple figures (like the two hands of a clock). In contrast, people may use a propositional code when the figures are more complex our memory has a limited capacity for visual imagery. We may therefore have difficulty storing complex visual information in an analog code and then making accurate judgments about these mental images.

analog code (Mental Imagery)

is a representation that closely resembles the physical object. Notice that the word analog suggests the word analogy, such as the analogy between the real object and the mental image. According to the analog-code approach, mental imagery is a close relative of perception. When you look at a sketch of a triangle, the physical features of that triangle are registered in your brain in a form that preserves the physical relationship among the three lines. when you are engaged in mental imagery, you create a mental image of an object that closely resembles the actual perceptual image on your retina Neuroimaging research also provides a great deal of evidence in favor of the analog perspective. For example, the primary visual cortex is activated when people work on tasks that require detailed visual imagery

propositional code

is an abstract, language-like representation; storage is neither visual nor spatial, and it does not physically resemble the original stimulus. According to the propositional-code approach, mental imagery is a close relative of language, not perception. For example, when you store a mental image of a triangle, your brain will register a language-like description of the lines and angles. Theorists have not specified the precise nature of the verbal description. However, it is abstract, and it does not resemble English or any other natural language. Your brain can then use this verbal description to generate a visual image

Perception

perception requires both bottom-up and top-down processing possible to have sensory-related experiences without bottom-up input being registered by your sensory receptors mental imagery is knowledge-driven—it involves utilizing the information stored in long-term memory to create internal images of sounds and objects that you have previously experienced.

Mental imagery (also called imagery)

refers to the mental representation of stimuli when those stimuli are not physically present in the environment Spatial ability is extremely important in the STEM disciplines, that is, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics

Mental Rotation

the topic of mental imagery is elusive and inaccessible. Researchers have attacked this problem by using the following logic: Suppose that a mental image really does resemble a physical object. Then people should be able to make judgments about this mental image in the same way that they make judgments about the corresponding physical object For example, we should be able to rotate a mental image in the same way that we can rotate a physical object. dependent variable is reaction time people's decision time was strongly influenced by the amount of mental rotation required to match a figure with its mate. For example, rotating a figure 160 degrees requires much more time than rotating it a mere 20 degrees. elderly people perform more slowly than younger people on a mental-rotation task. In contrast, age is not consistently correlated with other imagery skills, such as sense of direction or the ability to scan mental images American Sign Language - especially skilled in looking at an arrangement of objects in a scene and mentally rotating that scene by 180 degrees, They have an advantage because they have had extensive experience in watching a narrator produce a sign. Then, they must mentally rotate this sign 180 degrees. They need to perform this rotation frequently, so that they can match the perspective that they would use when producing this sign.

imagery debate

to refer to an important controversy: Do our mental images resemble perception (using an analog code), or do they resemble language (using a propositional code)?

auditory imagery

which is the mental representation of auditory stimuli.