Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing: Behavioral ... - Arteimi.info

larger mental imageries than smaller ones [18]. The results, though argued by
the contemporary psychologists, however, follow directly from intuition.
Moyer’s view: Robert Moyer provided additional information on the
correspondence between the relative size of the objects and the relative size of
their mental imagery. Moyer’s results were based on psychophysics, the
branch of psychology engaged in measuring peoples’ reactions to perceptual
stimuli [24]. In psychophysics, people take a longer time to determine which of
the two almost equal straight lines is larger. Moyer thus stated that the
reaction time to identify a larger mental image between two closely equal
images is quite large.
Peterson’s view: Unlike visual imagery, Intons-Peterson [28] experimented
with auditory signals (also called images). She asked her students to first
create a mental imagery of a cat’s purring and then the ringing tone of a
telephone set. She then advised her students to move the pitch of the first
mental imagery up and compare it with the second imagery. After many hours
of experimentation, she arrived at the conclusion that people require quite a
large time to compare two mental imageries, when they are significantly
different. But they require less time to traverse the mental imagery when they
are very close. For instance, the imagery of purring, being close enough to the
ticking of a clock, requires less time to compare them.
2.4.4 Imagery and Their Shape
How can people compare two similar shaped imageries? Obviously the
reasoning process looks at the boundaries and compares the closeness of the
two imageries. It is evident from commonsense reasoning that two imageries of
an almost similar boundary require a longer time to determine whether they are
identical. Two dissimilar shaped imageries, however, require a little reaction
time to arrive at a decision about their non-uniqueness.
Paivio [26] made a pioneering contribution in this regard. He established the
principle, stated above, by experiments with mental clock imagery. When the
angle between the two arm positions in a clock is comparable with the same in
another imagery, obviously the reaction time becomes large to determine which
angle is larger. The credit to Paivio lies in extending the principle in a generic
sense.
2.4.5 Part-whole Relationship in Mental Imagery
Reed was interested in studying whether people could determine a part-whole
relationship of their mental image [20]. For instance, suppose one has saved