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Seeing
graphic
Food for thought:
Can you have imageless thought? what exactly is a visual image? how is it stored in LTM? how are images and words stored in relation to one another? how would you even study/measure visual imagery?

History
    • Imagery research is rather new; started 25 years ago
    • Reasons for lack of interest: researchers thought of imagery as an ancillary activity & due to behaviorism: images could not be directly observed and therefore were not considered a legitimate area of research.
    • In the 1950s & 60s, people discovered that imagery greatly enhanced learning & memory
    • The 1970s saw a boom in imagery research

Anecdotal Observations
    • Einstein -imagined traveling beside a beam of light in formulating Relativity Theory
    • Watson -imagined pairs of adenine residues whirling in space before discovery of DNA
    • Jack Nicklaus -in imagining swinging a golf club, discovered error in his grip; improved game by 10 points immediately
    • James Surls -imagined sculptures before creating them; mentally able to remove/add to various portions of a sculpture
    • Reports from engineers, physicists, chess experts

IMAGERY & MEMORY - The mental picturing of a stimulus that affects later recall or recognition.
How are images and words stored in relation to one another? Similarities...differences
A test of memory for words and pictures:
Shepard (1967)
    • Study phase: list of pictures and words
    • 2-hour delay
    • Recognition phase: 100% pictures - 88% words
Schnorr and Atkinson (1969):
    • Subjects studied paired associates (dog-book) either by forming a visual image or by rote repetition.
    • Imagery condition did much better at remembering the second word (book) when cued with the first word (dog).
graphicPaivio's Dual- Coding Theory
According to Paivio's Dual-Coding hypothesis information can be represented in either a verbal or a nonverbal system.
1) Two independent but interacting system; Material can be processes in one or both systems
    • imagery system: stores images. Associated with right hemisphere processing.
    • verbal system: stores linguistic information, or verbal descriptions. Associated with left hemisphere processing.
Two codes increase the likelihood of later retrieval.

graphic
this image is adopted from the web site designed by Stephen R. Schmidt, Ph.D. @ Middle Tennessee State University
Effects of Imagery on Memory
Basic Result: Paivio (1971)
    • Give S's a long list of pictures or words to remember.
    • Later, test memory with either a recall or recognition memory test.
    • S's recall more pictures than words.
Explanations:
1) The Imagen system has superior memory abilities to the Logogen system.
2) Representing ideas in both systems is superior to representing ideas in only one system.
    • Paivio claimed that picture memory was superior because whenever we see a picture we also (automatically?) represent that picture verbally.
    • However, when we see a word, we do not necessarily form a mental image of the word.
How do you test which of these explanations is correct?
You could compare:
    • Memory for Verbalizable and Nonverbalizable pictures.
    • High-Imagability words (e.g., DESK) and Low-Imagability words (e.g., EFFORT).
    • S's who are instructed to form mental images of words and S's not instructed to form images of words.
Results: Across all these situations, the evidence consistently supports the claim that having two representations leads to superior memory.


Tulving & Thomson (1973) -- The Encoding Specificity Hypothesis
    • "Only that can be retrieved has been stored, and how it can be retrieved depends upon how it was stored."
    • Anything present during learning a target can serve as an effective cue for later remembering that target.
    • Each item is encoded into a richer memory representation, one that includes any extra information about the item that was present during encoding.
They used a simple Paired-Associate Learning Paradigm
Often used to study pro and retroactive interference.
A list of stimulus terms is paired item by item with a list of response terms.
After learning, the stimulus terms are used as cues for the response terms.
Sample Paired Associate Lists
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