Relation between sport and spatial imagery: comparison of three groups of participants

The literature suggests that sport may be considered a spatial activity and that engaging in spatial activities increases the capacity of an individual to implement mental imagery. Moreover, mental rotation calls upon motor processes that are heavily involved in sporting activities. For these reasons, the authors hypothesized that athletes ought to perform mental rotation tasks better than nonathletes. Also, athletes trained to react quickly to constantly changing environments should be faster at processing the information in a mental rotation task than athletes operating in more settled environments. The results of this study show that athletes performed the mental rotation task significantly faster than nonathletes. These results support the suggestion that there is a link between sport and the ability to perform mental image transformations; however, this ability may not be specific to the conditions in which the athlete performs.     

The relationship between self‐reports of imagery and spatial ability

A puzzling question arising from imagery research is why no relationship has been found between self‐reports of imagery and performance on spatial tests thought to require the use of imagery. To investigate this, spatial ability, measured by performance on two spatial tests, was compared with performance on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ; Marks, 1973) and a newly constructed imagery questionnaire. The choice of items and ratings for the new questionnaire was based on Kosslyn's (1980, 1994) theories of the imagery system. Ratings on the new questionnaire consistently correlated significantly with performance on the spatial tests, whereas ratings from the VVIQ did not. The new ratings captured more of the imagery process than ratings of vividness alone, but the largest change depended upon the type of item imagined. Ratings of items of the same type as used on the spatial tests predicted performance on the spatial tests, whereas vividness ratings of items recalled or constructed from long‐term memory did not. Participants can successfully introspect on several different properties of their images, and their ratings do predict performance on tasks thought to require imagery. The large effect of item type raises questions about the predictive value of existing models of the imagery system especially in relation to the role of phenomenological properties of our images.     

Motor imagery: the relation between age and imagery capacity

The imagination of motor actions forms not only a theoretical challenge for cognitive neuroscience but may also be seen as a novel therapeutic tool in neurological rehabilitation, in that it can be used for relearning motor control after damage to the motor system. However, since the majority of rehabilitation patients consist of older individuals it is relevant to know whether the capacity of mental imaging is compromised by age. Scores on the vividness of movement imagery questionnaire were obtained for 333 participants, divided in three age groups. Results showed that elderly participants were slightly worse in motor imagery capacity than younger participants, particularly in relation to motor imagery from an internal (first person) perspective. Furthermore, a possible relation between the level of physical activities and motor imagery capacity is discussed.     

Influence of mental imagery on spatial presence and enjoyment assessed in different types of media

Previous research studies on spatial presence point out that the users' imagery abilities are of importance. However, this influence has not yet been tested for different media. This is surprising because theoretical considerations suggest that mental imagery comes into play when a mediated environment lacks vividness. The aim of this study was to clarify the influence mental imagery abilities can have on the sensation of presence and enjoyment in different mediated environments. We presented the participants (n?=?60) a narrative text, a movie sequence, and a computer game. Across all media, no effect of mental imagery abilities on presence and enjoyment was found, but imagery abilities marginally interacted with the mediated environment. Individuals with high imagery abilities experienced more presence and enjoyment in the text condition. The results were different for the film condition: here, individuals with poor imagery abilities reported marginally higher enjoyment ratings, whereas the presence ratings did not differ between the two groups. Imagery abilities had no influence on presence and enjoyment within the computer game condition. The results suggest that good imagery abilities contribute to the sensations of presence and enjoyment when reading a narrative text. The results for this study have an applied impact for media use because their effectiveness can depend on the individual mental imagery abilities.     

Individual Differences in visual imagery and spatial ability

Spatial ability is generally assumed to involve construction, transformation, and interpretation of mental images. To explore the relationship between spatial ability and both image quality and image process efficiency, 79 subjects performed eight spatial tests, completed three imagery questionnaires, and participated in six laboratory tasks. These laboratory tasks were devised to measure image quality and the efficiency of image generation, image rotation, image scanning, adding and subtracting detail in images, and integration of images. Although ratings of imagery control and vividness were unrelated to spatial test performance, laboratory measures of process efficiency and image quality were strongly related to spatial test performance and weakly related to one another. A structural equation model identified a single spatial factor, Visualization ability, that can be decomposed into unique variance plus a linear combination of measures of image quality and image process efficiency. An interpretation of this model is that successful performance on spatial tests requires maintenance of a high-quality image and efficient image transformation and inspection processes.     

Through the inverting glass: first-person observations on spatial vision and imagery

Experience with inverting glasses reveals key factors of spatial vision. Interpretations of the literature based on the metaphor of a “visual image” have raised the question whether visual experience with inverting glasses remains inverted or whether it may turn back to normal after adaptation to the glasses. Here, I report on my experience with left/right inverting glasses and argue that a more fine-grained sensorimotor analysis can resolve the issue. Crucially, inverting glasses introduce a conflict at the very heart of spatial vision. At first, the experience of visual direction grounded in head movements differs from visual experience grounded in eye movements. During adaptation, this difference disappears, and one may learn to see without conflict where objects are located (this took me 123 h of practice). The momentary experience became once again integrated within the larger flow of visual exploration involving head movements, a change of experience that was abrupt and comparable to a Gestalt switch. The resulting experience remains different from normal vision, and I argue that this difference can be understood in sensorimotor terms. I describe how adaptation to inverting glasses is further reflected in mental imagery, supporting the idea that imagery is grounded in sensorimotor engagement with the environment as well.     

The influence of visual experience on visual and spatial imagery

Differences are reported between blind and sighted participants on a visual-imagery and a spatial-imagery task, but not on an auditory-imagery task. For the visual-imagery task, participants had to compare object forms on the basis of a (verbally presented) object name. In the spatial-imagery task, they had to compare angular differences on the basis of the position of clock hands on two clock faces, again only on the basis of verbally presented clock times. Interestingly, there was a difference between early-blind and late-blind participants on the visual-imagery and the spatial-imagery tasks: late-blind participants made more errors than sighted people on the visual-imagery task, while early-blind participants made more errors than sighted people on the spatial-imagery task. This difference suggests that, for visual (form) imagery, people use the channel currently available (haptic for the blind; visual for the sighted). For the spatial-imagery task in this study reliance on haptic processing did not seem to suffice, and people benefited from visual experience and ability. However, the difference on the spatial-imagery task between early-blind and sighted people in this study might also be caused by differences in experience with the analogue clock faces that formed the basis for the spatial judgments.     

Object imagery and object identification: object imagers are better at identifying spatially-filtered visual objects

Object imagery refers to the ability to construct pictorial images of objects. Individuals with high object imagery (high-OI) produce more vivid mental images than individuals with low object imagery (low-OI), and they encode and process both mental images and visual stimuli in a more global and holistic way. In the present study, we investigated whether and how level of object imagery may affect the way in which individuals identify visual objects. High-OI and low-OI participants were asked to perform a visual identification task with spatially-filtered pictures of real objects. Each picture was presented at nine levels of filtering, starting from the most blurred (level 1: only low spatial frequencies—global configuration) and gradually adding high spatial frequencies up to the complete version (level 9: global configuration plus local and internal details). Our data showed that high-OI participants identified stimuli at a lower level of filtering than participants with low-OI, indicating that they were better able than low-OI participants to identify visual objects at lower spatial frequencies. Implications of the results and future developments are discussed.     

Transfer of spatial behavior between different environments: implications for theories of spatial learning and for the role of the hippocampus in spatial learning

In 3 experiments, rats were required to find a submerged platform located in 1 corner of an arena that had 2 long and 2 short sides; they were then trained to find the platform in a new arena that also had 2 long and 2 short sides but a different overall shape. The platform in the new arena was easier to find if it was in a corner that was geometrically equivalent, rather than the mirror image, of the corner where it had previously been located. The final experiment revealed that hippocampal lesions impaired rats' ability to find the platform in these arenas. The results suggest that rats did not use the overall shape of the arena to locate the platform but relied on more local cues and that the hippocampus plays a role in navigation based on these cues.     

Processing distinctions between stems and affixes: evidence from a non-fluent aphasic patient

In this paper, we study the ability of a non-fluent aphasic patient, BN, to comprehend morphologically complex words when they appear in utterance contexts. We first establish that he is insensitive to the contextual appropriateness of both derived and inflected words. In a further experiment we show that he has no difficulty processing the stems of complex words and conclude that his problem is with the bound morphemes themselves. We then ask whether this problem is due to his inability to access either the phonological form of a morphologically complex word or its semantic and/or syntactic content. We find that only the access of semantic and syntactic content is impaired. We conclude from these six studies that: (a) BN presents a counter-example to the claim that non-fluent patients have particular difficulty with those aspects of morphology which have a syntactic function; (b) BN processes both derived and inflected words by mapping the sensory input onto the entire full-form of a complex word, but the semantic and syntactic content of the stem alone is accessed and integrated into the context. The semantic and syntactic implications of the suffix are never evaluated. This implies separate representation of the stems and suffixes of some types of morphologically complex words.     

The metrics of spatial distance traversed during mental imagery

The authors conducted 2 experiments to study the metrics of spatial distance in a mental imagery task. In both experiments, participants first memorized the layout of a building containing 10 rooms with 24 objects. Participants then received mental imagery instructions and imagined how they walked through the building from one room to another. The authors manipulated Euclidean distance involved in these imaginary motions: Spatial distance measured in centimeters on the layout was either short or long. Independently, they varied categorical distance: The motions led through one room or two rooms. The time needed to imagine motions and response times to test probes indicated that both Euclidean distance and categorical distance affected mental imagery. The authors discuss the new finding of categorical distance effects in mental imagery and relate the results to earlier failures to find Euclidean distance effects in formally equivalent studies of narrative comprehension.     

Object detection in natural scenes: Independent effects of spatial and category-based attention

Humans are remarkably efficient in detecting highly familiar object categories in natural scenes, with evidence suggesting that such object detection can be performed in the (near) absence of attention. Here we systematically explored the influences of both spatial attention and category-based attention on the accuracy of object detection in natural scenes. Manipulating both types of attention additionally allowed for addressing how these factors interact: whether the requirement for spatial attention depends on the extent to which observers are prepared to detect a specific object category—that is, on category-based attention. The results showed that the detection of targets from one category (animals or vehicles) was better than the detection of targets from two categories (animals and vehicles), demonstrating the beneficial effect of category-based attention. This effect did not depend on the semantic congruency of the target object and the background scene, indicating that observers attended to visual features diagnostic of the foreground target objects from the cued category. Importantly, in three experiments the detection of objects in scenes presented in the periphery was significantly impaired when observers simultaneously performed an attentionally demanding task at fixation, showing that spatial attention affects natural scene perception. In all experiments, the effects of category-based attention and spatial attention on object detection performance were additive rather than interactive. Finally, neither spatial nor category-based attention influenced metacognitive ability for object detection performance. These findings demonstrate that efficient object detection in natural scenes is independently facilitated by spatial and category-based attention.     

Assessing relations between imagery and perception

Direct comparisons between perceptual performance and reports made under imagery instructions are uninterpretable except in cases where (a) the perceptual phenomenon is well understood and (b) experimental constraints are sufficient to establish imagery causally in the effect. Neither condition seems to be satisfied in Finke and Kurtzman's article. Furthermore, if imagery is an internal medium conceived in introspective terms, the second condition can never be met because the medium is not accessible to operational definition. Perhaps the basic problem with this research is that the instructions used to create conditions in imagery experiments do not qualify as operational definitions. Reports of successful compliance with imagery instructions are logically equivalent to introspective reports.     

Object and spatial representations in the corner enhancement effect

Cole, Gellatly, and Blurton have shown that targets presented adjacent to geometric corners are detected more efficiently than targets presented adjacent to straight edges. In six experiments, we examined how this corner enhancement effect is modulated by corner-of-object representations (i.e., corners that define an object's shape) and local base-level corners that occur as a result of, for instance, overlapping the straight edges of two objects. The results show that the corner phenomenon is greater for corners of object representations than for corners that do not define an object's shape. We also examined whether the corner effect persists within the contour boundaries of an object, as well as on the outside. The results showed that a spatial gradient of attention accompanies the corner effect outside the contour boundaries of an object but that processing within an object is uniform, with no corner effect occurring. We discuss these findings in relation to space-based and object-based theories of attention.     

Object recognition with severe spatial deficits in Williams syndrome: sparing and breakdown

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder that results in severe visual-spatial cognitive deficits coupled with relative sparing in language, face recognition, and certain aspects of motion processing. Here, we look for evidence for sparing or impairment in another cognitive system-object recognition. Children with WS, normal mental-age (MA) and chronological age-matched (CA) children, and normal adults viewed pictures of a large range of objects briefly presented under various conditions of degradation, including canonical and unusual orientations, and clear or blurred contours. Objects were shown as either full-color views (Experiment 1) or line drawings (Experiment 2). Across both experiments, WS and MA children performed similarly in all conditions while CA children performed better than both WS group and MA groups with unusual views. This advantage, however, was eliminated when images were also blurred. The error types and relative difficulty of different objects were similar across all participant groups. The results indicate selective sparing of basic mechanisms of object recognition in WS, together with developmental delay or arrest in recognition of objects from unusual viewpoints. These findings are consistent with the growing literature on brain abnormalities in WS which points to selective impairment in the parietal areas of the brain. As a whole, the results lend further support to the growing literature on the functional separability of object recognition mechanisms from other spatial functions, and raise intriguing questions about the link between genetic deficits and cognition.     

Remembering the past and imagining the future: a neural model of spatial memory and imagery

The authors model the neural mechanisms underlying spatial cognition, integrating neuronal systems and behavioral data, and address the relationships between long-term memory, short-term memory, and imagery, and between egocentric and allocentric and visual and ideothetic representations. Long-term spatial memory is modeled as attractor dynamics within medial-temporal allocentric representations, and short-term memory is modeled as egocentric parietal representations driven by perception, retrieval, and imagery and modulated by directed attention. Both encoding and retrieval/imagery require translation between egocentric and allocentric representations, which are mediated by posterior parietal and retrosplenial areas and the use of head direction representations in Papez's circuit. Thus, the hippocampus effectively indexes information by real or imagined location, whereas Papez's circuit translates to imagery or from perception according to the direction of view. Modulation of this translation by motor efference allows spatial updating of representations, whereas prefrontal simulated motor efference allows mental exploration. The alternating temporal-parietal flows of information are organized by the theta rhythm. Simulations demonstrate the retrieval and updating of familiar spatial scenes, hemispatial neglect in memory, and the effects on hippocampal place cell firing of lesioned head direction representations and of conflicting visual and ideothetic inputs.     

Item concreteness vs spatial organization as predictors of visual imagery

The relative contributions of item concreteness and interitem spatial organization to recall processes were studied by attempting to induce modality-specific interference between recall and response. Separate groups of 12 Ss learned lists of items that varied in physical or referential visual characteristics. They later signaled information about them either vocally or via a visually guided response. Some ways of presenting lists for learning that are traditionally regarded as increasing reliance on mediating imagery were effective in generating conflict between recall and the visually guided response. This effectiveness was limited to presentation conditions and list types that introduced spatial organization into the stimulus material. The concreteness of individual items was not useful in predicting visual conflict.