A. Koch
Psych 256
After reading the chapter on Visual Imagery for the course, I found myself thinking about this debate often. I noticed that I could not describe objects or even previous experiences without also having a spatial representation in my mind of the objects or activities. When I would talk about what I had for breakfast I would not only picture my food, but my experice with the food. The mechanisms involved do not allow me to just have an image of a banana, say, as though on an index card. Rather an image of the bananas in my home in their correct place.
I decided I wanted to take my thoughts and see how others “remember” or describe objects that are not physically present. I work with developmentally disabled adults, and one thing I found to be very interesting was that nearly all of my clients could not describe a banana, unless they were autistic or high functioning Down’s syndrome clients. Each other client could not even bring to mind the color of the item when it was not present. The most interesting thing about this is that when presented with the item physically, they could tell me what it was, the color, and that it is meant to be eaten.
While my findings may indicate that developmentally disabled people lack the mechanisms involved in imagery it may also indicate that unless presented with the item they cannot recall knowledge about the item. Though, it appeared to me that it was the first option due to their ability to tell me that they do know what the item is, they just cannot describe it.
Then I asked my co-staff about their weekend, general questions, after describing their activities to me I asked them if, as they were telling me, they visualized their activities as they described them. Each person looked at me a little strange, then answered yes as though they had never noticed before that they visualize to recall.
Though I keep and open mind in this debate, a debate I find fascinating, I certianly believe that there are direct mechanisms between imagery and perception. I do not believe that it is an epiphenomenon due to the science that leads me to believe the two are directly connected.
Also, I am not making claims about all developmentally disabled adults and their abilities. I am only trying to describe my experience in this situation.
I found your post very interesting. We learned about a dissociation between imagery and perception (Goldstein, 2011). I wonder if this is what is going on with the adults that you work with. Perhaps they are able to perceive the image when they see it, but cannot visually imagine it later. Or maybe their difficulty in describing something they are not seeing is an issue with language and not with imagery. They may be able to imagine the object, but cannot put into words what they are seeing. I’m not sure what specific disabilities those you work with have, but these were a few ideas I had after reading your post. As far as not realizing that we use imagery so often, I feel like I have noticed that more lately too. If I am recalling something that happened previously, I usually imagine the situation again as I am talking about it. I also use imagery for situations other than memory. For example, I spent tonight at a work event and when my coworkers asked where my husband was and I responded that he was at home, I was mentally imagining him either playing video games, watching TV, or playing with our dog. These are all things I have seen him do before and while I was not imagining a specific situation in this instance, I was imagining what I believed he was doing based on my knowledge of how he normally spends his free time. I was using imagery just to answer the question of where my husband was.
Reference
Goldstein, E.B. (2011). Cognitive psychology. (3rd ed.) Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning
It’s interesting to see how different people recall events and information. I’ve been paying more attention to how I recall things, and I’ve found that I do use visual imagery to recall episodic memories, like what I had for breakfast, but not usually for semantic memories like information on a test, which makes sense because I don’t normally try to encode semantic memories visually. But for semantic information that I still have the episodic memory for, like remembering what my husband was telling me while we were driving yesterday, I do visualize us driving while I try to recall what he was telling me.
I think it’s easier to test whether we personally use visual imagery when we think of how we recall things, but there’s other ways we can use visual imagery. A couple of years ago, the Today Show had a teenage girl on the show who could repeat any given word backwards almost instantly. It’s a remarkable talent that the girl said she had been developing since she started reading. But all she does is visualize the word and then read it backwards (this was a bit of a sobering fact for me when I heard it- like when you found out that your dad couldn’t really pull quarters out of your ears- but it’s still very remarkable how quickly the girl is able to say the words backwards). While it’s not necessarily a practical use of visual imagery, it does show a unique task that uses visual imagery.
YouTube. “Backwards Talking Girl Alyssa on the Today Show 2/1/12.” Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VQFvXkz-oQ
I really must start off by saying that I appreciate your comment at the very end of this entry because it would be a shame to overgeneralize an entire population of people after asking such a small number of people one question. All too much people tend to make that mistake. Moving on to the material!
I do not visualize things as I say them. For instance, when asked what I did for Easter, I do not visually bring into account my whole day, I simply list the activities that me family and I participated in leading me to experience things in a more propositional representation. However, when I can not remember off of the top of my head, I will try to visualize the scene in my head of who, what, when, where and then I can easily remember which is a more spatial representation. I agree that both are not only connected but also beneficial as well. Since our STM can only hold so much I think it is very beneficial to be able to recall different things in different ways as to hopefully be able to remember more.