PSY 654 Exam 3 ACTUAL QUESTIONS
AND CORRECT ANSWERS
Who was the psychologist who argued that visual imagery is an epiphenomenon? - CORRECT
ANSWER Zenon Pylyshyn
- Critiqued imagery as being not useful for humans
-- Argued that imagery is an epiphenomenon, meaning imagery is something that happens, but just
because it happened doesn't mean it serves any function
- Cat Table Figure
-- If you say the phrase there are some people who do not need to imagine it, or do, but at the end of
the day they still understand the phrase, therefore they think there is no use in it, and that it does not
help us understand
Discuss two behavioral tasks that have been used to demonstrate similarities
between imagery and perception. What is the name of the researcher who used these tasks? -
CORRECT ANSWER 1. Stephen Kosslyn (Mental Scanning)
- fake map that he had participants memorize
- asked them to mentally travel to different landmarks from one point and press a key once they were
there
- the farther the landmark was, the longer it took participants
- technically it should not take you longer to go anywhere since you are doing this mentally
- imagery and perception go hand in hand
2. Stephen Kosslyn (Size in Visual Field)
(Mental walk task)
- If we imagine walking up to a car, the object gets bigger
- Another example of similarities between perceiving and imagery
- If you ask people to imagine a bunny rabbit next to an elephant, you do it so it fits your visual field,
and because elephants are so big we almost have to zoom out, and imagine the rabbit to be very small
next to it
- Very different from when we imagine a bunny rabbit next to a fly, bunnies are not as big as
elephants, but our brains zoom in to ae it larger and the flies smaller
- If you ask them if the bunny has whiskers, it takes them longer to answer when imagine it next to an
elephant compared to fly because they are zoomed out
, Discuss three pieces of neuroimaging/neuropsychological evidence showing
that imagery and perception are closely related to one another. - CORRECT ANSWER
Neuroimaging
1. Single cell recording
- You can now have someone having open brain surgery awake and electrically stimulate parts of the
brain and ask what it feels like
- If Fusiform cortex was electrically stimulated, people are gonna visual or think of faces
2. Brain imaging
- If you put someone FMRI scanner and put them in front of a blank screen and then ask them to
imagine a person or scenario, you will see activity in occipital lobe, which is related to vision
- You see activity in that area when asked to imagine rather than just staring at the blank screen
3. TMS
- we can use this to knock-out a function of the brain temporarily. For example, if administered to the
Occipital Lobe, one would have a hard time imagining an image that they were just exposed to.
- They encoded it they just can't get the image back
- Once their brain is back to normal they can answer the question of it was encoded properly
- Shows that our visual cortex also works with memory and visual images
Neuropsychology
1. Neuropsychology (visual cortex damage)
- People with damage, their visual field can shrink depending on the damage extent
- When they imagine things it is further away so it can fit
2. Neuropsychology (unilateral neglect)
- If you damage right visual cortex you lose left side of body, and can't create a mantle image in the
left
- With right side damage you would not be able to imagine the right side of the plaza, the left side
does not show up in your mental image
can be dissociated!
- Partially overlapping systems
AND CORRECT ANSWERS
Who was the psychologist who argued that visual imagery is an epiphenomenon? - CORRECT
ANSWER Zenon Pylyshyn
- Critiqued imagery as being not useful for humans
-- Argued that imagery is an epiphenomenon, meaning imagery is something that happens, but just
because it happened doesn't mean it serves any function
- Cat Table Figure
-- If you say the phrase there are some people who do not need to imagine it, or do, but at the end of
the day they still understand the phrase, therefore they think there is no use in it, and that it does not
help us understand
Discuss two behavioral tasks that have been used to demonstrate similarities
between imagery and perception. What is the name of the researcher who used these tasks? -
CORRECT ANSWER 1. Stephen Kosslyn (Mental Scanning)
- fake map that he had participants memorize
- asked them to mentally travel to different landmarks from one point and press a key once they were
there
- the farther the landmark was, the longer it took participants
- technically it should not take you longer to go anywhere since you are doing this mentally
- imagery and perception go hand in hand
2. Stephen Kosslyn (Size in Visual Field)
(Mental walk task)
- If we imagine walking up to a car, the object gets bigger
- Another example of similarities between perceiving and imagery
- If you ask people to imagine a bunny rabbit next to an elephant, you do it so it fits your visual field,
and because elephants are so big we almost have to zoom out, and imagine the rabbit to be very small
next to it
- Very different from when we imagine a bunny rabbit next to a fly, bunnies are not as big as
elephants, but our brains zoom in to ae it larger and the flies smaller
- If you ask them if the bunny has whiskers, it takes them longer to answer when imagine it next to an
elephant compared to fly because they are zoomed out
, Discuss three pieces of neuroimaging/neuropsychological evidence showing
that imagery and perception are closely related to one another. - CORRECT ANSWER
Neuroimaging
1. Single cell recording
- You can now have someone having open brain surgery awake and electrically stimulate parts of the
brain and ask what it feels like
- If Fusiform cortex was electrically stimulated, people are gonna visual or think of faces
2. Brain imaging
- If you put someone FMRI scanner and put them in front of a blank screen and then ask them to
imagine a person or scenario, you will see activity in occipital lobe, which is related to vision
- You see activity in that area when asked to imagine rather than just staring at the blank screen
3. TMS
- we can use this to knock-out a function of the brain temporarily. For example, if administered to the
Occipital Lobe, one would have a hard time imagining an image that they were just exposed to.
- They encoded it they just can't get the image back
- Once their brain is back to normal they can answer the question of it was encoded properly
- Shows that our visual cortex also works with memory and visual images
Neuropsychology
1. Neuropsychology (visual cortex damage)
- People with damage, their visual field can shrink depending on the damage extent
- When they imagine things it is further away so it can fit
2. Neuropsychology (unilateral neglect)
- If you damage right visual cortex you lose left side of body, and can't create a mantle image in the
left
- With right side damage you would not be able to imagine the right side of the plaza, the left side
does not show up in your mental image
can be dissociated!
- Partially overlapping systems
