Introduction to Cognitive Psychology - Department of Psychological ...

Professor Greg Francis 8/14/12Mental rotationVividnessThis type of experiment has been taken as strongevidence that mental images are not just propositionsThere are individual differences in reports of mental imagevividness imagined movement of the mental image (rotation) resemblesactual movement It takes time to mentally move through a mental space» The CogLab data suggests it is about 100 degrees/second» 10 milliseconds for each degree some people report their mental images are just like real images others report they are fuzzy and vague some people report no mental images at all (10%) Nevertheless, people all do basically the same on many tasks thatseem to require operating on mental images no reason why propositions would give data that incorporatespatial and temporal relations between aspects of the mentalimagesPurdue UniversityPurdue UniversityfMRIfMRIHugdahlet al. (2006) had subjects perform a mentalrotation task or a comparison task (did not require rotation)in an fMRI scannerCompared to the 2-D condition, the 3-D condition hasmore activity in the superior parietal lobesMalesFemalesPurdue UniversityPurdue UniversityConclusionsNext timeMental representations of pictorialConsciousnessinformationDualismThere are some things you cannot do withmental imagesPropositions are importantArtificial intelligenceQualiaMental images are not just propositionsMental rotation taskDo you see red like I see green?Purdue UniversityPurdue UniversityPSY 200: Intro. to Cognitive Psychology 4