What are mental images in psychology? We use the term ‘mental imagery’ to refer to representations and the accompanying experience of sensory information without a direct external stimulus. Such representations are recalled from memory and lead one to re-experience a version of the original stimulus or some novel combination of stimuli.
What is another word for "mental image"?
Synonyms for image include vision, hallucination, image, picture, visualisation, visualization, mental picture, illusion, dreaming and nightmare. Find more ...
What does mental image mean?
In short, according to the psychological definition, mental imagery is perceptual representation not triggered directly by sensory input (or representation-involving perceptual processing not triggered directly by sensory input – these two phrases will be used interchangeably in what follows).
What is the definition of a mental image?
A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of perceiving some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses.
How to visualize mental images?
How to Visualize Clearly: 7 Tips For Success
- Don’t Stop At The “Visual”. Far too many people think that “ visualization ” is about seeing clear pictures in their minds. ...
- Have a Written Vision Statement. A written vision statement is a simple, 2-5 page declaration of what you want to achieve in your own words.
- Mind Map Your Vision. ...
- Create a Treasure Map. ...
- Do a Visualization Meditation. ...
- Journal Daily. ...
What are the types of mental images?
There are several types of imagery within this model such as cognitive specific, cognitive general, motivational specific, motivational general arousal, motivational general master, and many more. The second model, the PETTLEP, is based on the notion that brain structures are activated during imagery.
What do you call a mental image?
thought-image a mental image produced by the imagination.
What does a mental image look like?
What is mental imagery? Close your eyes and visualize an apple. Many readers will have a quasi-perceptual experience that may be a bit similar to actually seeing an apple. For those who do, this experience is an example of mental imagery – in fact, it is the kind of example philosophers use to introduce the concept.
What are the three types of mental imagery?
There are seven kinds of mental imagery....Ten Types of ImageryHypnagogic. ... Hypnopompic. ... Dream Imagery. ... Waking Imagery. ... Symbolic Imagery. ... Mystical Imagery. ... The Leaders' Vision. ... Archetypal Imagery.More items...
Can anxiety cause mental images?
Patients with posttraumatic stress disorder, other anxiety disorders, depression, eating disorders, and psychosis frequently report repeated visual intrusions corresponding to a small number of real or imaginary events, usually extremely vivid, detailed, and with highly distressing content.
Does everyone have a mental image?
Zeman and his colleagues have heard from more than 12,000 people who say they don't have any such mental camera. The scientists estimate that tens of millions of people share the condition, which they've named aphantasia, and millions more experience extraordinarily strong mental imagery, called hyperphantasia.
Why do we have mental images?
Mental imagery enables us to reactivate and manipulate internal representations when the corresponding stimuli are absent. In the case of visual mental imagery, this process gives rise to the experience of 'seeing with the mind's eye.
Can you see mental images?
Most people can readily conjure images inside their head - known as their mind's eye. But this year scientists have described a condition, aphantasia, in which some people are unable to visualise mental images. Niel Kenmuir, from Lancaster, has always had a blind mind's eye. He knew he was different even in childhood.
What is a mental image or best example of a category?
AP Psychology Ch. 09 Thinking & LanguageABprototypea mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories.algorithma methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem28 more rows
What are mental images and how do we manipulate them?
Phenomenology of Mental ImagesWhen we form a mental image our experience seems much like seeing something in our mind. ... When we form a mental image we seem to be able to manipulate them and we seem to be solving problems some times by means of manipulating them.More items...
Why is mental imagery important in learning?
This is particularly useful in learning situations because, sometimes, new problems, to be solved, must be set differently from the way in which they immediately present themselves. In these cases, mental images are useful because they allow to form an anticipatory representation of different solution strategies.
How do you practice mental imagery?
So if you are new to the practice of visualization, here are our top 7 beginner visualization tips to help you on your way.Try Not To Overthink Things. ... Use All Your Senses. ... Make Sure You're Relaxed. ... Have A Regular visualization Practice. ... Connect With The Emotion Of Visualization. ... Visualize With A Sense Of Knowing.
What are mental models called?
The phrase “mental model” is an overarching term for any sort of concept, framework, or worldview that you carry around in your mind. Mental models help you understand life. For example, supply and demand is a mental model that helps you understand how the economy works.
What is a person's image called?
Noun. A representation of a human or animal form in drawing or sculpture. figure. effigy. likeness.
What is the best definition of mental imagery?
Mental imagery is commonly defined as a form of experience: quasi-perceptual experience, experience that subjectively resembles the experience we have when we actually perceive something (see 'Glossary').
What is the Greek word for mental image?
Aristotle's Greek word, that is commonly and traditionally translated as " [mental] image" is “ phantasma ” (plural: phantasmata ), a term used by Plato to refer to reflections in mirrors or pools (or the liver), amongst other things, but which Aristotle seems to reserve to appearances in the psyche.
What is the analog side of the mental representation debate?
To a first approximation, the analog side of the debate holds that the mental representations that we experience as imagery are, in some important sense, like pictures, with intrinsically spatial representational properties of the sort that pictures have (i.e., pictures do not just represent spatial relationships between the objects they depict, but represent those relationships, at least in part, via actual spatial relationships on the picture surface). The propositional side, by contrast, holds the relevant mental representations to be more like linguistic descriptions (of visual scenes), without inherently spatial properties of their own. Although it began as a dispute amongst scientists, the debate clearly touches on fundamental issues about the nature of mind and thought, and perhaps the nature of science too, so it soon attracted a good deal of interest from philosophers as well.
What is analog propositional?
The analog-propositional debate, occasionally also called the picture-description debate, or sometimes just the imagery debate (as if there were no other debatable or hotly debated issues about imagery) is an ongoing and notoriously irreconcilable dispute within cognitive science about the representational format of visual mental imagery. The huge impact it had on the early development of the field appears to have resulted in a widespread belief, amongst both philosophers and cognitive scientists, that analog and propositional theories (those terms being understood in the rather special senses that they have acquired in this context), together, perhaps, with hybrid theories that claim to incorporate elements of both (e.g., Tye, 1991; Chambers, 1993), completely exhaust the space of possible or empirically plausible scientific accounts of imagery (Thomas, 2002). That is not the case, as we shall see in section 4.5 .
What did Holt (1964) find?
These include research on hallucinogenic drugs, developments in electroencephalography, the discovery of REM sleep and its correlation with dreaming, and Penfield's (1958) finding that direct electrical stimulation of certain brain areas can give rise to vivid memory (or pseudo-memory) imagery . More significant, however, (according to Holt) was a line of psychological research that was originally inspired by practical, rather than theoretical, concerns: by the perceptual problems experienced by people such as radar operators, long-distance truck drivers, and jet pilots, whose work requires them to remain perceptually alert whilst watching monotonous, impoverished, and barely changing visual stimuli over extended periods of time. In the laboratory, subjects experiencing such sensory deprivation often spontaneously reported vivid, intrusive, and sometimes bizarre mental imagery, “like having a dream while awake” (Bexton, Heron, & Scott, 1954; but see Suedfeld & Coren, 1989). Despite the introspective nature of the evidence, the practical implications of these findings (for such things as road and air safety) made them hard to dismiss.
What is mental imagery?
Mental imagery (varieties of which are sometimes colloquially refered to as “visualizing,” “seeing in the mind's eye,” “hearing in the head,” “imagining the feel of,” etc.) is quasi-perceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli.
When was the American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery founded?
An American Association for the Study of Mental Imagery was also founded in 1978 , with a mission to promote “the study of mental imagery as a part of human science and the application of scientific knowledge about mental imagery in the relief of human suffering and the enhancement of personal development”.
When did psychology first emerge as an experimental science?
When psychology first began to emerge as an experimental science, in the philosophy departments of the German universities in the late 19th century, and soon after in the United States, the central role of imagery in mental life was not in question.
What is the first wave of mental imagery research?
To explain, the first wave of imagery research focused largely on the role of performance enhancement, the study of the mental practice effect ( MacIntyre and Moran, 2007 ). It spanned approximately a century from when William James first expounded on the topic of imagination up until to the 1990s when evidence for the mental practice effect cumulatively led to two supportive meta-analyses (e.g., Driskell et al., 1994; Feltz and Landers, 1983 ). It is noteworthy that this research phase was extensive with the first published mental practice study, an investigation of free-throw performance in basketball, conducted four decades before the initial systematic review ( Vandell et al., 1943 ). The next stage was comparatively brief and two strands of research developed concurrently. In applied domains, such as sport psychology, researchers sought to understand how imagery was used and applied by performers in everyday sport settings (e.g., Hall et al., 1998 ). In the 1990s, what was later referred to by the US Senate as the “decade of the brain,” because of methodological advances due to innovations in brain imaging research, a multi-disciplinary research program of evidence-based theorizing on specific imagery modalities including, for example, visual, spatial and motor imagery ( Jeannerod, 1994; Kosslyn, 1994) challenged the view that mental imagery was unitary construct. The third wave in a zeitgeist of theory driven-research has attempted to combine testing neurally plausible models with interventions utilized both for their applied efficacy (e.g., performance and rehabilitation). Researchers continue to use motor imagery as a window into cognition, action and perception ( Munzert et al., 2009 ). Motor imagery has gained much clarity as a consequence and as we shall discuss, mental imagery research has a long past but only a short history of robust empirical findings, so that many questions remain and new pathways for discovery are emerging.
Why is mental imagery important in communication?
This chapter argues that not only does mental imagery play a significant role in the communication process, it is also an effective tool that providers can use to help lower stress and accelerate development of the traits and skills associated with the person-centered approach to communication.
Why is mental imagery important?
Mental imagery is therefore not just key to understanding others, it is key to the maintenance of self-esteem, to helping us chart a way through the triumphs and tribulations of everyday life.
What is mental imagery?
Mental imagery is commonly defined as a form of experience: quasi-perceptual experience, experience that subjectively resembles the experience we have when we actually perceive something (see ‘Glossary’).
How does mental rehearsal help athletes?
Some sport psychologists have developed structured training programs to help athletes improve mental rehearsal. Researchers have recently proposed a model that may be useful in the training and practice of imagery. Athletes are encouraged to consider where (e.g., during practice, before a competition) and why (e.g., trying to build general confidence, trying to improve a specific skill) they employ imagery. Athletes are trained not only to select places and times to use imagery that is consistent with what they are trying to achieve but also to use different types of imagery for general or specific goals. Imagery may be either specific (e.g., imagining the successful performance of a particular skill) or general (e.g., imagining oneself competing with confidence). The bulk of research suggests that imagery practice enhances specific skills and, like physical practice, should be distributed across time.
What happens when a provider and an older adult interact?
When a provider and an older adult interact, both individuals are creating mental images–images that can either support or hinder the communication process (Achterberg, 1985 ). Although the imagery generated during these interactions usually remains outside of conscious awareness, it can still influence outcomes.
Why do athletes use imagery?
Researchers have recently proposed a model that may be useful in the training and practice of imagery. Athletes are encouraged to consider where (e.g., during practice, before a competition) and why (e.g., trying to build general confidence, trying to improve a specific skill) they employ imagery.
How can VVIQ be used to predict changes in the brain?
Recent studies have found that individual differences in VVIQ scores can be used to predict changes in a person's brain while visualizing different activities. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study the association between early visual cortex activity relative to the whole brain while participants visualized themselves or another person bench pressing or stair climbing. Reported image vividness correlates significantly with the relative fMRI signal in the visual cortex. Thus, individual differences in the vividness of visual imagery can be measured objectively.
How are mental images formed?
There are several theories as to how mental images are formed in the mind . These include the dual-code theory, the propositional theory, and the functional-equivalency hypothesis. The dual-code theory, created by Allan Paivio in 1971, is the theory that we use two separate codes to represent information in our brains: image codes and verbal codes. Image codes are things like thinking of a picture of a dog when you are thinking of a dog, whereas a verbal code would be to think of the word "dog". Another example is the difference between thinking of abstract words such as justice or love and thinking of concrete words like elephant or chair. When abstract words are thought of, it is easier to think of them in terms of verbal codes—finding words that define them or describe them. With concrete words, it is often easier to use image codes and bring up a picture of a human or chair in your mind rather than words associated or descriptive of them.
What is it called when you don't have mental imagery?
The condition where a person lacks mental imagery is called aphantasia. The term was first suggested in a 2015 study. Common examples of mental images include daydreaming and the mental visualization that occurs while reading a book.
What makes mental images possible?
As contemporary researchers use the expression, mental images or imagery can comprise information from any source of sensory input; one may experience auditory images, olfactory images, and so forth. However, the majority of philosophical and scientific investigations of the topic focus upon visual mental imagery. It has sometimes been assumed that, like humans, some types of animals are capable of experiencing mental images. Due to the fundamentally introspective nature of the phenomenon, there is little to no evidence either for or against this view.
What is mental image?
A mental image or mental picture is an experience that , on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of visually perceiving some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are sometimes episodes, particularly on falling asleep ( hypnagogic imagery) ...
Why are mental images important?
In this view, mental images allow us to form useful theories of how the world works by formulating likely sequences of mental images in our heads without having to directly experience that outcome.
Which regions of the brain are activated during visual manipulation?
These regions included the occipital lobe and ventral stream areas, two parietal lobe regions, the posterior parietal cortex and the precuneus lobule, and three frontal lobe regions, the frontal eye fields, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex , and the prefrontal cortex. Due to their suspected involvement in working memory and attention, the authors propose that these parietal and prefrontal regions, and occipital regions, are part of a network involved in mediating the manipulation of visual imagery. These results suggest a top-down activation of visual areas in visual imagery.
What is mental rehearsal?
Mental rehearsal, also referred to as imagery, guided imagery, mental practice, or visualization, is defined in sports psychology literature as, “the cognitive rehearsal of a task in the absence of overt physical movement.”. When you imagine or rehearse performing an action with no overt movement, you are using mental rehearsal or mental practice.
What is the emphasis of sports psychologists?
Many sports psychologist in the field of sports psychology place too much emphasis on the use of mental imagery or mental rehearsal in performance enhancement. For example, Chuck Hogan based his entire program on creativity and mental imagery.
Why do athletes use imagination?
Most athletes use imagination and mental imagery instinctively to help them prepare for and perform motor skills. When I was an athlete in high school and in college, I would instinctively “rehearse,” or see the play in my mind, before execution. A mental coach or team coach did not instruct me to use mental rehearsal at that time.
What is the use of imagery in sports?
When discussing imagery, most coaches and even sports psychologist focus on “visualization,” but the use of imagery is more than just a “visual” experience. Athletes use many other modalities or senses when applying imagery, such as auditory and kinesthetic, which may be even more important (especially for kinesthetic learners and performers).
What is the most important task for a mental game coach?
The most important task for the mental game coach is to discover the person’s dominant learning style or performance mode.
When you imagine or rehearse performing an action with no overt movement, you are using?
When you imagine or rehearse performing an action with no overt movement, you are using mental rehearsal or mental practice. The terms mental rehearsal and mental imagery are general terms that encompass imagery, visualization, and mental practice.
Why does practice occur in sports?
Thus, practice occurs when the athlete actually performs the action or when the athlete vividly imagines performing the action because similar neural pathways to the muscles fire in either case.
Why was mental rotation important?
This was a very important finding, because it implied that mental images could be manipulated as if real.
What condition was the rabbit's image small?
People took longer to answer such questions when the rabbit was imagined next to an elephant. In that condition, the rabbit's image was small.
How to make imagery more vivid?
The best way to make imagery more vivid is to imitate the conditions of sleep. When one is relaxed or half asleep, mental imagery can be quite vivid.
How long did it take for Baggett to conclude that participants lost detailed memories for the images themselves?
Baggett concluded that after three days participants lost detailed memories for the images themselves. They mostly remembered the meaningor story behind those images. The test item seemed familiar because it fit with the meaning of the images.
Where did mental imagery come from?
Early, important studies of mental imagery came from Roger Shepard of Stanford University and various colleagues . He used computer-generated block shapes similar to these: One shape is different from the others. Three of the shapes are the same as each other, only rotated.
What is cognitive psychology?
Cognitive psychology studies pictures existing in imagination. You must turn off your ad blocker to use Psych Web; however, we are taking pains to keep advertising minimal and unobtrusive (one ad at the top of each page) so interference to your reading should be minimal.
What happens when you press your eyelids?
Simply pressing lightly on closed eyelids can result in an explosion of geometric forms. You might recall from Chapter 3 that vivid imagerysometimes occurs upon awakening, in the hypnopompic state.
What is the Meaning of Self-Image?
Self-image refers to how we see ourselves on a more global level, both internally and externally.
How long does it take to administer a self image profile?
It is a self-report measure that can be completed in individual or group work. It is appropriate for adults 17 and up and it only takes 7 to 15 minutes to administer.
What does it mean when your self image is distorted?
Having a distorted self-image means that you have a view of yourself that is not based in reality. We all have slight variations and detachments from reality—maybe we think we’re a bit thinner or heavier than we really are, for example—but when your self-image is greatly detached from reality, it can cause serious emotional and psychological problems.
What does it mean when you look in the mirror?
These self-images can be very positive, giving a person confidence in their thoughts and actions, or negative, making a person doubtful of their capabilities and ideas.”. What you see when you look in the mirror and how you picture yourself in your head is your self-image.
Why is it important to discover your strengths?
Discovering strengths is a sure way to boost your self-image, especially for teens who may not have as much experience and self-knowledge as you do.
What to say to a child at a family dinner?
Saying something like “Our family dinners are a chance to decompress with those around who love us” or “We have so many things to be grateful for” will help even the youngest children understand what is important to your family and what is expected of them: to participate in meaningful family moments and to show gratitude for everything they have.
What are the effects of a sex disorder?
Intense, highly changeable moods that can last for several days or for just a few hours. Strong feelings of anxiety, worry, and depression. Impulsive, risky, self-destructive and dangerous behaviors, including reckless driving, drug or alcohol abuse, and having unsafe sex. Hostility.
Meanings and Connotations of ‘Mental Imagery’
- Mental imagery is a familiar aspect of most people's everydayexperience (Galton, 1880a,b, 1883; Betts, 1909; Doob, 1972; Marks, 1972,1999). A few people may insist that they rarely, or even never,consciously experience imagery (Galton, 1880a, 1883; Faw, 1997, 2009;but see Brewer & Schommer-Aikins, 2006), but for the vast majorityof us, it is a fami...
Pre-Scientific Views of Imagery
- It seems likely that mental imagery has been discussed for as long ashumans have been trying to understand their own cognitive processes.It receives attention in the oldest extended writings about cognitionthat have come down to us – the works of Plato and Aristotle– and there is reason to believe it was discussed by yet earlierGreek thinkers. Plato's and particularly Aristotle's writing…
Imagery in The Age of Scientific Psychology
- When psychology first began to emerge as an experimental science, in the philosophy departments of the German universities in the late 19th century, and soon after in the United States, the central role of imagery in mental life was not in question. For these pioneering experimentalists, such as Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and William James in America, mental ima…
Imagery in Cognitive Science
- A revival of interest in imagery was an important component of the socalled cognitive revolution in psychology during the 1960s and early 1970s, a period when the Behaviorist intellectual hegemony over the field was broken and the concept of mental representationwas established as central and vital to psychological theorizing (Baars, 1986; Gardner, 1987; but see also Leahey, 19…
Overview
A mental image is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of 'perceiving' some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses. There are sometimes episodes, particularly on falling asleep (hypnagogic imagery) and waking up (hypnopompic imagery), when the mental imagery may be dynamic, phantasmagoric and involuntary in character, repeatedly presenting identifiable object…
In experimental psychology
Cognitive psychologists and (later) cognitive neuroscientists have empirically tested some of the philosophical questions related to whether and how the human brain uses mental imagery in cognition.
One theory of the mind that was examined in these experiments was the "brain as serial computer" philosophical metaphor of the 1970s. Psychologist Zenon Pylyshyn theorized that the …
The mind's eye
The notion of a "mind's eye" goes back at least to Cicero's reference to mentis oculi during his discussion of the orator's appropriate use of simile.
In this discussion, Cicero observed that allusions to "the Syrtis of his patrimony" and "the Charybdis of his possessions" involved similes that were "too far-fetched"; and he advised the orator to, instead, just speak of "the rock" and "the gulf" (respectively)—on the grounds that "the eyes of th…
Physical basis
The biological foundation of mental imagery is not fully understood. Studies using fMRI have shown that the lateral geniculate nucleus and the V1 area of the visual cortex are activated during mental imagery tasks. Ratey writes:
The visual pathway is not a one-way street. Higher areas of the brain can also send visual input back to neurons in lower areas of the visual cortex. [...] As hu…
Neural substrates of visual imagery
Visual imagery is the ability to create mental representations of things, people, and places that are absent from an individual’s visual field. This ability is crucial to problem-solving tasks, memory, and spatial reasoning. Neuroscientists have found that imagery and perception share many of the same neural substrates, or areas of the brain that function similarly during both imagery and perception, such as the visual cortex and higher visual areas. Kosslyn and colleagues (1999) sho…
Philosophical ideas
Mental images are an important topic in classical and modern philosophy, as they are central to the study of knowledge. In the Republic, Book VII, Plato has Socrates present the Allegory of the Cave: a prisoner, bound and unable to move, sits with his back to a fire watching the shadows cast on the cave wall in front of him by people carrying objects behind his back. These people and the objects they carry are representations of real things in the world. Unenlightened man is like the p…
Training and learning styles
Some educational theorists have drawn from the idea of mental imagery in their studies of learning styles. Proponents of these theories state that people often have learning processes that emphasize visual, auditory, and kinesthetic systems of experience. According to these theorists, teaching in multiple overlapping sensory systems benefits learning, and they encourage teachers to use content and media that integrates well with the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic systems …
Visualization and the Himalayan traditions
In general, Vajrayana Buddhism, Bön, and Tantra utilize sophisticated visualization or imaginal (in the language of Jean Houston of Transpersonal Psychology) processes in the thoughtform construction of the yidam sadhana, kye-rim, and dzog-rim modes of meditation and in the yantra, thangka, and mandala traditions, where holding the fully realized form in the mind is a prerequisite prior to creating an 'authentic' new art work that will provide a sacred support or foundation for d…