Download Chapter 7: Student Questions 1. What is one of the main reasons

Chapter 7: Student Questions
1. What is one of the main reasons why there was such a large gap in time between
early studies of mental imagery and later discoveries by researchers such as Shepard
and Kosslyn and their colleagues?
a. Techniques had not yet been discovered to equate imagery processes with brain
processes.
b. The behaviorists weren’t interested in studying anything that couldn’t be observed.
c. Ebbinghaus set an example of using only nonmeaningful stimuli to study cognitive
processes (such as memory).
d. Not enough people reported using imagery in their daily life to make it an interesting
topic for research.
2. Kosslyn, Seger, Pani, and Hillger (1990) had people keep diaries about their mental
images. Which of the following was NOT a reason why people said they pictured
images? [Check all that apply.]
a. To learn a new skill
b. To access information stored in long-term memory
c. To alter long-term memories
d. To comprehend verbal messages
3. A task that employs transitive inference is one that:
a. recalls visual properties of objects, such as color or size.
b. forces people to draw a conclusion about how objects are ordered along some
dimension.
c. asks people to imagine themselves learning a new skill.
d. use visual imagery to help overcome a phobia.
4. Paivio (1975) asked people to make size judgments about the different-size objects
depicted by a pair of pictures (e.g., picture of a bicycle; picture of a toaster) OR a pair of
words (e.g., BICYCLE, TOASTER). Consider only the picture conditions: People would
be asked, “Which is larger?” and then shown two stimuli. In which condition did people
take longest to make accurate size judgments?
a. The Words condition took longer than the Pictures condition because people had to
translate from a word to an image of the objects.
b. CONGRUENT PICTURES, such as when an airplane was depicted as large and a
rabbit was shown as small
c. INCONGRUENT PICTURES, such as when a rabbit was depicted as large but an
airplane was shown as small
d. Both a and b
e. Both a and c
5. Early studies by Shepard and his colleagues determined that when people had to
make same/different judgments about either block figures or letters, the main influence
on response time was:
a. the number of parts or visual features in the stimuli.
b. whether the stimuli were shown in color versus black and white.
c. the familiarity of the stimuli to a person.
d. the difference in the angle of rotation between the stimuli.
6. Kosslyn, Ball, & Reiser (1978) asked people to memorize a map with several
landmarks. They found that the time to scan from one landmark (e.g., “sandy beach”) to
another (e.g., “wishing well”) was correlated with how far apart the two landmarks were.
This is analogous to actual vision, in which it takes us longer to scan greater distances.
This illustrates which of Finke’s Principles?
a. Spatial Equivalence
b. Implicit Encoding
c. Perceptual Equivalence
d. Transformational Equivalence
7. A musician is trying to mentally “hear” a new piece of music in her head to better
acquaint herself with the melody. Which of the following should interrupt her ability to do
so?
a. Having someone tap her on the shoulder during the activity
b. Having someone hum a popular tune as they walk past her
c. Seeing a familiar face in the distance
d. Glancing up at a low-flying airplane
8. Pylyshyn claimed that all information in long-term memory, even memory for what
objects look like, is stored in:
a. a propositional (sentence-like) code only.
b. a dual code—both a propositional and a visual code.
c. a visual code only.
d. an auditory code (similar to mentally talking to one’s self).
9. If I ask you whether Abraham Lincoln had a beard, you are likely to mentally picture
Abraham Lincoln, and then respond “yes.” Some researchers (e.g., Pylyshyn) have
claimed that your image was epiphenomenal. What does this mean?
a. Your image appears to you only in black and white, not in color.
b. Your image appears more vivid than actually having a picture of Abraham Lincoln in
front of you.
c. Generating your image uses up all working memory capacity, and thus you cannot
perform any other task at the same time.
d. Your image was not causal to your being able to answer the question.
10. According to the propositional view of imagery, why do people have trouble
detecting nonobvious shapes within the hidden-figures task (e.g., the center
parallelogram inside a Star of David figure)?
a. Attention is focused on the overall shape of a figure, not its parts.
b. Shapes with more than 3 sides are difficult to detect in both imagery and in
perception of a figure.
c. People have trouble detecting shapes that were not initially specified by the original
description under which they encoded the figure.
d. Refreshing an image in working memory is cognitively difficult, and does not leave
room for interpretation.