Visual Imagery

Subjects participated in perceptual and imagery tasks while their brains were scanned using positron emission tomography. In the perceptual conditions, subjects judged whether names were appropriate for pictures. In one condition, the objects were pictured from canonical perspectives and could be recognized at first glance; in the other, the objects were pictured from noncanonical perspectives and were not immediately recognizable. In this second condition, we assume that top-down processing is used to evaluate the names. In the imagery conditions, subjects saw a grid with a single X mark; a lowercase letter was presented before the grid. In the baseline condition, they simply responded when they saw the stimulus, whereas in the imagery condition they visualized the corresponding block letter in the grid and decided whether it would have covered the X if it were physically present. Fourteen areas were activated in common by both tasks, only 1 of which may not be involved in visual processing (the precentral gyrus); in addition, 2 were activated in perception but not imagery, and 5 were activated in imagery but not perception. Thus, two-thirds of the activated areas were activated in common. 1997

The article is devoted to the study of personal and national identities on the example of sports photos as a symbolic capital. The purpose of this study is to show how photography and sports come together, in a way that together contributes to the consolidation of the nation, contributes to national pride and identity, and hence—to forming personal identity on the base of them either. The structural-functional approach is used, in particular, the theory of ‘social action’ by the American philosopher J. G. Mead. Photography is the channel through which the most international language such as sports can be transmitted, and the individual experience by it unified and integrated in the process of forming personal identity. Of particular interest are the photographs of athletes in Europe and how they contribute to the accumulation of symbolic capital for nation-states, and for self-determination of personal identity. The authors note that photography is an important part of people’s daily lives, and its significance goes beyond their nature to entertain. A photographic image provides the basis for identification. A person through a visual image seeks to determine his personal, and then national identity. In today’s world, identity is a dynamic system. In this regard, it can be compared with sports, which also constantly develop and ultimately open up new sports, modify qualification competitions, etc. Another social field that is on the rise at the same time is professional sports. By the mid-20th century, the sport of the privilege of the rich was becoming a mass sport. It was not until the 20th century that workers, women and minority groups had access to sports. The authors conclude that in the context of the importance of interdisciplinary research, which allows revealing the processes of formation of national and personal identity, research of this nature can take on further development. *Keywords: identity, self-identity, self-identification, national identity, self-determination, visual image, punctum, philosophy of sports, social philosophy, symbolic capital.

It is currently claimed that congenitally blind do not have visual imagery and are therefore unable to present visual contents in their dreams. The aim of our study was to quantitatively evaluate the existence of visual imagery in born-blind dreams and to correlate it with objective measures, such as sleep EEG frequency components, namely with alpha attenuation (regarded as an indicator of visual activity), and graphical analysis of dream pictorial representations. The investigation was carried out via simultaneous recordings of dream reports and polysomnography, during nocturnal sleep at volunteers' homes; scheduled regular awakenings during the night provided the data for dream and EEG analysis. In the morning, subjects were asked to make a drawing of their dream images. Congenitally blind (n510) were comparable to normal sighted subjects (n59): the two groups presented equivalent visual activity indices, and no differences in the analysis of graphical representation of dreaming imagery. However, blind subjects presented a lower rate of dream recall than sighted (27% versus 42%). Both groups had significant negative correlation between Visual Activity Index (VAI) and alpha power in the central and occipital O2 derivations (blind: C4: r520. 615, P,0.005; O2: r520.608, P,0.006; sighted: C4: r520.633, P,0.01; O2: r520.506, P,0.05). This correlation was weaker for the blind in O1 (r520.573, P,0.05) and non-existent for the sighted. Blind individuals have significantly lower alpha activity in the central derivation. In conclusion, the congenitally blind have visual content in their dreams and are able to draw it and, as expected, their VAI is negatively correlated with EEG alpha power. 

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between visual imagery and metaphor, highlighting the historical neglect of this relationship in philosophy and cognitive science and exploring the reasons behind this neglect in theoretical and empirical studies. After outlining influential philosophical theories on the relationship between metaphor and visual imagery, I provide a critical overview of empirical findings on this. Thus, I argue that experimental studies lack sufficient empirical evidence to make meaningful generalizations and fail to determine the true role of visual imagery in metaphor comprehension. Nevertheless, they do not allow us to rule out the involvement of imagery in the comprehension of at least certain metaphors. The present paper proposes that visual imagery might play different roles depending on the semantic features of the vehicle and the kind of meaning conveyed by different types of metaphors. I conclude this discussion by sketching a roadmap for further exploration of this fascinating and challenging relationship.

https://benjamins.com/catalog/pc.00034.gar?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0R92AkUTFN49WT1pdwLF_luWeJEENA0_dp74gXmAtWrzv62eCNctHP1Jk_aem_epMJspTGe9140DzMm-X63Q

Recent research into perception, the visual brain, and neuropsychology has important implications for understanding Upper Palaeolithic art. The relevant aspects of this research will be described and how this relates to the art produced. It will also be shown that the depiction of animals in caves provides particularly important evidence in this regard. Specific natural features and environmental conditions of the cave will be shown to have interacted with the way the visual brain functions that led to the ability to produce animal depictions in particular ways over a period of 20,000 years. Some suggestions are offered demonstrating how the various insights gained may impact on socio-cultural factors associated with such depictions.

We used human movement as the basis for designing a collaborative aesthetic design environment. Our intention was to promote social interaction and creative expression. We employed off-the-shelf computer vision technology. Movement became the basis for the choreography of gestures, the development of gesture recognition, and the development of imagery and visualization. We discovered that the design of clear affordances is no less important in movement-based than in mouse-based systems. Through an integrated and iterative design process, we developed a new type of affordance, the choreographic button, which integrates choreography, gesture recognition, and visual feedback. Jumping, a quick movement, and crouching, a sustained gesture, were choreographed to form a vocabulary that is personally expressive, and which also facilitates automatic recognition. How can we evaluate socially motivated interactive systems? To create a context for evaluation, we held an integrated exhibition, party, and user study event. This mixing of events produced an engaging environment in which participants could choose to interact with each other, as well as with the design environment. We prepared a mouse-based version of the design environment, and compared how people experienced it with the movementbased system. Our study demonstrates that movement-based affordances promote social interaction.

During the last decades, many cognitive architectures (CAs) have been realized adopting different assumptions about the organization and the representation of their knowledge level. Some of them (e.g. SOAR [35]) adopt a classical symbolic approach, some (e.g. LEABRA[48]) are based on a purely con-nectionist model, while others (e.g. CLARION [59]) adopt a hybrid approach combining connectionist and symbolic representational levels. Additionally, some attempts (e.g. biSOAR) trying to extend the representational capacities of CAs by integrating diagrammatical representations and reasoning are also available [34]. In this paper we propose a reflection on the role that Conceptual Spaces, a framework developed by Peter Gärdenfors [24] more than fifteen years ago, can play in the current development of the Knowledge Level in Cognitive Systems and Architectures. In particular, we claim that Conceptual Spaces offer a lingua franca that allows to unify and generalize many aspects of the symbolic, sub-symbolic and diagrammatic approaches (by overcoming some of their typical problems) and to integrate them on a common ground. In doing so we extend and detail some of the arguments explored by Gärdenfors [23] for defending the need of a conceptual, intermediate, representation level between the symbolic and the sub-symbolic one. In particular we focus on the advantages offered by Conceptual Spaces (w.r.t. symbolic and sub-symbolic approaches) in dealing with the problem of compositionality of representations based on typicality traits. Additionally, we argue that Conceptual Spaces could offer a unifying framework for interpreting many kinds of diagrammatic and analogical representations. As a consequence, their adoption could also favor the integration of diagrammatical representation and reasoning in CAs.

Autobiographical memory (AM) entails a complex set of operations, including episodic memory, self-reflection, emotion, visual imagery, attention, executive functions, and semantic processes. The heterogeneous nature of AM poses significant challenges in capturing its behavioral and neuroanatomical correlates. Investigators have recently turned their attention to the functional neuroanatomy of AM. We used the effectlocation method of meta-analysis to analyze data from 24 functional imaging studies of AM. The results indicated a core neural network of left-lateralized regions, including the medial and ventrolateral prefrontal, medial and lateral temporal and retrosplenial/posterior cingulate cortices, the temporoparietal junction and the cerebellum. Secondary and tertiary regions, less frequently reported in imaging studies of AM, are also identified. We examined the neural correlates of putative component processes in AM, including, executive functions, self-reflection, episodic remembering and visuospatial processing. We also separately analyzed the effect of select variables on the AM network across individual studies, including memory age, qualitative factors (personal significance, level of detail and vividness), semantic and emotional content, and the effect of reference conditions. We found that memory age effects on medial temporal lobe structures may be modulated by qualitative aspects of memory. Studies using rest as a control task masked process-specific components of the AM neural network. Our findings support a neural distinction between episodic and semantic memory in AM. Finally, emotional events produced a shift in lateralization of the AM network with activation observed in emotion-centered regions and deactivation (or lack of activation) observed in regions associated with cognitive processes.

Episodic memory (EM) involves reliving or re-experiencing past experiences, which suggests that EM depends on mental imagery. Aphantasics lack mental imagery, however, which would imply that they don't have EM, and people with "severely deficient autobiographical memory" (SDAM) also lack the ability to relive or re-experience. Both aphantasics and people with SDAM are otherwise normally functioning people, however, and do have personal memories, which is an other defining aspect of EM. By implication, episodic memory is not a natural kind but a loose collection of independent mental faculties. Aphantasics indeed lack episodic memory, because there is no such thing as episodic memory.

An updated version of this talk was published as “Aphantasia, SDAM, and Episodic Memory” in the Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, vol. 28 (2019), pp. 9-32.

We describe a framework for coordinating multiple robots in cooperative manipulation tasks in which vision is used for establishing relative position and orientation and maintaining formation. The two key contributions are a cooperative scheme for localizing the robots based on visual imagery that is more robust than decentralized localization, and a set of control algorithms that allow the robots to maintain a prescribed formation (shape and size). The ability to maintain a prescribed formation allows the robots to "trap" objects in their midst, and to "flow" the formation to a desired position. We derive the cooperative localization and control algorithms and present experimental results that illustrate the implementation and the performance of these algorithms.

Little is known about the restorative impact of visual art on war veterans diagnosable with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A literature review was conducted to identify existing theories and guidelines that address the use of visual art in general acute-care health care settings. Then, case studies of visual imagery’s impact on war veterans’ trauma-related symptoms were examined. The case studies included the use of visual imagery during art therapy sessions and therapeutic visits to war memorials. Finally, the authors suggest hypotheses that may guide future research on evidence-based guidelines for visual art for war veterans with PTSD.

Vanity sizing, the practice of clothing manufacturers, whereby smaller size labels are used on clothes than what the clothes actually are, has become very common. Apparently, it helps sell clothes—women prefer small size clothing labels to large ones. We propose and demonstrate that smaller size labels evoke more positive self-related mental imagery. Thus, consumers imagine themselves more positively (thinner) with a vanity sized size-6 pant versus a size-8 pant. We also show that appearance self-esteem moderates the (mediating) effect of imagery on vanity sizing effectiveness—while vanity sizing evokes more positive mental imagery for both low and high appearance self-esteem individuals, the effect of the positive imagery on clothing preference is significant (only) for people with low appearance self-esteem, supported by the theory of compensatory self-enhancement. Our suggestion of simple marketing communications affecting valence of imagery and consequent product evaluation have implications for many other marketing domains.

Does visual creativity rely predominantly on visual abilities and verbal creativity on verbal abilities, or is there a cross-over between the domains? Participants (N = 25) performed several visual tasks and verbal ability tests, as well as visual and verbal creativity tests. Both correlation and multidimensional scaling analyses were performed. Visual creativity was found to be related to visual abilities, in particular to restructuring. Verbal creativity was related to verbal ability scores, such as vocabulary and comprehension, but also by vividness scores of the visual imagery questionnaire. These findings are consistent with the notion that visual creativity is largely domain- and task-specific, whereas verbal creativity, even though mostly domain-specific, may, to some extent, be sensitive to processes in the visual domain as well.

Two experiments investigated the reality attributed to hypnotic suggestion through subtle projection of a visual image during simultaneous suggestion for a visual hallucination that resembled the projected image. In Experiment 1, high and low hypnotizable participants were administered either a hypnotic induction or wake instructions, given a suggestion to hallucinate a shape, and then the projected image was subsequently introduced. Although highs in both conditions rated the projected image more vividly than lows, highs in the hypnosis (but not wake) condition made comparable reality ratings when the projected image was absent and present. In Experiment 2, high hypnotizable participants were administered a suggestion to see a shape on a wall. For half the participants the suggested image was projected on the wall and then removed, and for half the projection was initially absent and then introduced. Participants who had the projection absent and then present reported comparable reality and vividness ratings when the projection was absent and present. These findings indicate that elevated hypnotizability and hypnosis are associated with attributions of external reality to suggested experiences.

Research suggests that averting gaze from an interlocutor can improve both children's and adults' performance in a range of cognitive tasks (e.g., . With the present experiments, we investigated the effect of gaze aversion on adults' visual-spatial imagination, using a methodology adapted from .

The reported study was conducted to investigate the effect of environmental form on peoples' two types of path imagery: abstract and scenographic. Four hundred and ninety-eight students from three universities, which had different campus designs, were assigned to different group tasks, in which they were tested in both abstract (map-like) performance and scenographic (photographic composition) performance. Results revealed that students at the university of grid-patterned and repetitive design made significantly more errors in scenographic imagery than students at the other two universities. There were no significant differences among students of the three campuses on abstract imagery. Students' abstract performance was clearly superior to their scenographic one. Finally, the study was in support of the concept that we represent environmental knowledge through multiple images.

Resting-state functional connectivity studies with fMRI showed that the brain is intrinsically organized into large-scale functional networks for which the hemodynamic signature is stable for about 10 s. Spatial analyses of the topography of the spontaneous EEG also show discrete epochs of stable global brain states (so-called microstates), but they remain quasi-stationary for only about 100 ms. In order to test the relationship between the rapidly fluctuating EEG-defined microstates and the slowly oscillating fMRIdefined resting states, we recorded 64-channel EEG in the scanner while subjects were at rest with their eyes closed. Conventional EEG-microstate analysis determined the typical four EEG topographies that dominated across all subjects. The convolution of the time course of these maps with the hemodynamic response function allowed to fit a linear model to the fMRI BOLD responses and revealed four distinct distributed networks. These networks were spatially correlated with four of the resting-state networks (RSNs) that were found by the conventional fMRI group-level independent component analysis (ICA). These RSNs have previously been attributed to phonological processing, visual imagery, attention reorientation, and subjective interoceptive-autonomic processing. We found no EEG-correlate of the default mode network. Thus, the four typical microstates of the spontaneous EEG seem to represent the neurophysiological correlate of four of the RSNs and show that they are fluctuating much more rapidly than fMRI alone suggests.

In the field of brain-computer interface (BCI) research, building more intuitive and goal-directed BCI systems is a key to breakthrough. "Visual motion imagery," which enables visual imaging of the operation of a target is one possible method for application to BCI. As a foothold study for applying visual motion imagery to BCI, we examined EEG source activity during visual motion imagery via comparison with visual motion perception. Source activities induced in beta band activity in the right posterior cingulate, left precuneus and left cuneus, and in low gamma activity in the right inferior parietal lobule and supramarginal gyrus were significantly higher in visual motion imagery than in visual motion perception. These findings identify promising brain areas for feature extraction for the development of BCI using visual motion imagery.

There is an increasing interest in the relationship between imagery and emotion (e.g., . The present research examined whether unconscious emotions affect visual imagery. In particular, participants were invited to perform a mental rotation test following subliminal presentation of happy, sad and neutral expressions. This study revealed an increase in mental rotation abilities after unconscious visual processing of emotional expressions. Altogether, these findings support the hypothesis of a bidirectional relationship between imagery and emotions.

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess the maximal degree of shared neural processing in visual mental imagery and visual perception. Participants either visualized or saw faint drawings of simple objects, and then judged specific aspects of the drawings (which could only be evaluated properly if they used the correct stimulus). The results document that visual imagery and visual perception draw on most of the same neural machinery. However, although the vast majority of activated voxels were activated during both conditions, the spatial overlap was neither complete nor uniform; the overlap was much more pronounced in frontal and parietal regions than in temporal and occipital regions. This finding may indicate that cognitive control processes function comparably in both imagery and perception, whereas at least some sensory processes may be engaged differently by visual imagery and perception.

Drawing on a sample of 372 dreams from 15 blind adults, we present two separate analyses that replicate and extend findings from previous studies. The first analysis employed DreamSearch, a software program designed for use with dream narratives, to examine the appearance of the five sensory modalities. It revealed that those blind since birth or very early childhood had (1) no visual imagery and (2) a very high percentage of gustatory, olfactory, and tactual sensory references. The second analysis found that both male and female participants differed from their sighted counterparts in the same ways on several Hall and Van de Castle (1966) coding categories, including a high percentage of locomotion/transportation dreams that contained at least one dreamer-involved misfortune. The findings on sensory references and dreamer-involved misfortunes in locomotion/transportation dreams are interpreted as evidence for the continuity between dream content and waking cognition.

The urgent need to mitigate and adapt to climate change is becoming more widely understood in scientific and policy circles, but public awareness lags behind. The potential of visual communication to accelerate social learning and motivate implementation of the substantial policy, technological, and life-style changes needed, has begun to be recognised. In particular, realistic landscape visualisations may offer special advantages in rapidly advancing peoples' awareness of climate change and possibly affecting behaviour and policy, by bringing certain possible consequences of climate change home to people in a compelling manner. However, few such applications are yet in use, the theoretical basis for the effectiveness of visualisations in this role has not been clearly established, and there are ethical concerns elicited by adopting a persuasive approach which deliberately engages the emotions with visual imagery. These questions and policy implications are discussed in the context of a theoretical framework on the effects of landscape visualisation on a spectrum of responses to climate change information, drawing in part on evidence from other applications of landscape visualisation. The author concludes that the persuasive use of visualisations, together with other approaches, may be effective, is justified, and could be vital in helping communicate climate change effectively, given ethical standards based on disclosure, drama, and defensibility.

The availability and salience of object attributes under haptic exploration, with and without vision, were assessed by two tasks in which subjects sorted objects that varied factorially in size, shape, texture, and hardness. In the directed-discrimination task, sub

In her 2009 new media artwork PolesApart, Australian Aboriginal artist r e a, 1 of the Gamilaraay people in northern New South Wales, explores issues relating to the Stolen Generations of Aboriginal children. Based on the personal experiences of her grandmother and great aunt as 'stolen children', r e a amplifies the work's familial dimension by enacting the role of the protagonist fleeing from forced servitude. This paper looks at PolesApart in the broader context of the interrelated phenomena of the stolen generations and the so-called 'history wars'. It is posited that the power, immediacy and affective dimensions of (moving) visual imagery have been instrumental in shifting Australians' knowledge about the stolen generations from the margins into the mainstream. The capacity of the moving image to 'embody affect' [13], it is argued, has enabled many more Australians than previously to appreciate the historical implications and continuing ramifications of this prolonged episode in Australian history. This has in turn led to the development of a more sympathetic public understanding of the phenomenon of the stolen generations as 'lived experience'. In turn this broader social knowledge, and its integration into our shared cultural heritage, has contributed to Australians' general receptiveness to the official Apology issued to members of the stolen generations by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Federal Parliament (13th February 2008). It is also the case that the popular reception of mainstream stolen generation-themed movies has influenced Australians' openness to the themes and issues explored in contemporary non-mainstream new media work such as r e a's PolesApart. In the latter work, through the use of the vehicle of her own body, r e a demonstrates that the personal is inescapably political, and vice versa.

This article presents a protocol for investigating the role of visual imagery in the bouba/kiki-effect, whether training in noticing the bouba/kiki shape-audio regularities affects the bouba/kiki-effect and the recognition of individual bouba and kiki shapes, and finally what mental images these regularities produce. To generate bouba/kiki shape-audio regularities, there were two types of shapes (filled; outlined) and two types of audio (word; non-word sound). Three groups of individuals participated in three experiments: Blind, blindfold, and vision. The experiments were conducted in fixed order across participants, with no break between them. In Experiment 1 (pre-test-post-test design with three repeated withingroup measures) the participants were asked to pick out the shape they associated with the auditory bouba/kiki; in Experiment 2 (within-subject design), to name one shape and some audio (sometimes congruous; sometimes incongruous) as 'bouba' or 'kiki;' and in Experiment 3 (posttest only design), to draw the shape they associated with the auditory bouba/kiki. The results suggest that the blindfold-group draw upon visual imagery to solve new problems, but not long term; that training in noticing bouba/kiki shape-audio regularities affects the bouba/kiki-effect and the recognition of individual bouba and kiki shapes, but differently in each experimental group; and that all experimental groups create mental images of the most characteristic shape feature of bouba (curve) and kiki (angle). In fact, the effect of visual imagery is robust across tasks, but not long term; the effect of learning shape-audio regularities is robust long term, but not across tasks. The presented protocol is appropriate for investigating the effect of visual imagery and learning shape-audio regularities, when they occur and how robust they are; in specific individuals and groups of individuals. This protocol is unique in that it keeps under control both the visual imagery and the sensory information during training and testing.

This paper considers the performance of subsea intervention tasks from an unmanned untethered submersible while using acoustic communications. It is argued that the low bandwidth and high delay imposed by acoustic modems makes it unwise to adopt conventional teleoperation techniques and a system is presented which permits subsea teleoperative tasks to be carried out using such limited communication resources. The described implementation employs active techniques to assist the operator both in performing actions and in recovering from those problems which will inevitably occur during realworld interaction. It provides the operator with both simulated and real visual imagery and is designed to adapt dynamically to changing bandwidth and computational resources. Experiments are described in which an operator in Philadelphia, PA, controlled a robot manipulator mounted on the JASON underwater vehicle submerged off the Massachusetts coast. All communication over this 500-km distance was via a combination of internet and a simulated acoustic link. Analysis of the bandwidth requirements showed them to be consistent with those from acoustic subsea networks.

A major question in the field of sensory substitution concerns the nature of the perception generated by sensory substitution prostheses. Is the perception determined by the nature of the substitutive modality or is it determined by the nature of the information transmitted by the device? Is it a totally new, amodal, perception? This paper reviews the recent neuroimaging studies which have investigated the neural bases of sensory substitution. The detailed analysis of available results led us to propose a general scheme of the neural mechanisms underlying sensory substitution. Two different main processes may be responsible for the visual area recruitment observed in the different studies: cross-modality and mental (visual) imagery. Based on our results analysis, we propose that crossmodality is the predominant process in early blind subjects whereas mental imagery is predominant in blindfolded sighted subjects. This model implies that, with training, sensory substitution mainly induces visual-like perception in sighted subjects and mainly auditory or tactile perception in blind subjects. This framework leads us to make some predictions that could easily be tested. r

Auditory and visual imagery were studied in a sample of 128 participants, including 34 self-reported aphantasics. Auditory imagery (Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale-Vividness, BAIS-V) and visual imagery (Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire-Modified, VVIQ-M) were strongly associated, Spearman's rho = 0.83: Most self-reported aphantasics also reported weak or entirely absent auditory imagery; and participants lacking auditory imagery tended to be aphantasic. Similarly, vivid visual imagery tended to co-occur with vivid auditory imagery. Nevertheless, the aphantasic group included one individual with typical auditory imagery; and the group lacking auditory imagery (N = 29) included one individual with typical visual imagery. Hence, weak visual and auditory imagery can dissociate, albeit with low apparent incidence. Auditory representations and auditory imagery are thought to play a key role in a wide range of psychological domains, including working memory and memory rehearsal, prospective cognition, thinking, reading, planning, problem-solving, self-regulation, and music. Therefore, self-reports describing an absence of auditory imagery raise a host of important questions concerning the role of phenomenal auditory imagery in these domains. Because there is currently no English word denoting an absence of auditory imagery, we propose a new term, anauralia, for referring to this, and offer suggestions for further research.

SUMMARY Early in a scientific debate, before much evidence has accumulated, why are some scientists inclined toward one position and other scientists toward the opposite position? We explore this issue with a focus on scientists' views of the 'imagery debate' that unfolded in ...

This study explores the relationship between public speaking anxiety (PSA) and Imaginary Interactions (IIs). Participants (N = 17) were recruited from the multi-section departmental introductory public speaking course. Virtual reality (VR) as a potential form of II treatment for PSA blurs the reality between imagined and actual interactions. This study utilized a sequential explanatory approach to examine infer-ential and descriptive findings. The inferential investigation employed a four-stage design requiring participants to complete pre-test PSA and post-test assessments before and after VR simulations, exploring II functions and attributions. The follow-up descriptive analysis expanded and generated new understanding for the complexities of II through participants' experiences using directed content analysis. Utilizing VR as an extension of IIs highlighted the rehearsal function, and variations in attri-butions for discrepancy and specificity between VR realism and artificial simulated perceptions. The implications suggest that VR provides students in public speaking environments a treatment mechanism that minimizes the cognitive strain to imagine
the scene and setting of the situation, while simultaneously providing assistance in PSA reduction.

With its large diaspora, Ireland has a long tradition of travel ranging from emigration to return migration, expatriate visits as well as tourism. Although Irish tourism increased substantially with the climax of the so-called Celtic Tiger in the early 1990s, Ireland was a major tourist destination even before that. This article explores emotions, memory, and nature in images (in travel

The focus of this paper is to address the issue of visual imagery in cross-cultural consumer research. The authors investigate the relationship between visual imagery, brand familiarity, and brand claim recall in two distinct cultural environmentsthe U.S. and Russia. The paper consists of two studies that explored imagery potency from the point of view of memory-evoking effects. The results suggest that image-intensive tools generate different returns depending on the level of brand familiarity and cultural media. The research findings may be of interest to marketing scholars studying cross-cultural consumer behavior as well as to practitioners operating in international advertising and global brand building.

In an earlier paper, we reported thai subjects have great difficulty in finding alternative construals of their own mental images. In the present paper, we examine how subjects can nonetheless learn from their mental images. We argue that menial images, like percepts, are meaningful depictions. As such, mental images do depict appearance but are also inherently understood in a certain way, and this understanding influences the phenomenal appearance of the represented form. This, in turn, governs what the form will be seen to resemble and what the form is likely to call from memory. We report four experiments in support of this view. In each experiment, subjects are briefly shown outline shapes and asked to form a mental image of each shape. Subjects are then asked what familiar form the imaged shape resembles. Subjects routinely find target shapes in their images when the target is compatible both with the imaged geometry and with how that geometry is organized and understood. When the sought-for target is compatible with image geometry but not with how the image is understood, subjects reliably fail to find the target shape in their images.

• The role of the cognitive style (Visualization/Verbalization) on visual creativity was explored. • The Visualization/Verbalization questionnaire (VVQ) and the creative synthesis task were used. • The VVQ score predicted originality of inventions. a b s t r a c t In the last two decades, interest towards creativity has increased significantly since it was recognized as a skill and as a cognitive reserve and is now always more frequently used in ageing training. Here, the relationships between visual creativity and Visualization–Verbalization cognitive style were investigated. Fifty college students were administered the Creative Synthesis Task aimed at measuring the ability to construct creative objects and the Visualization–Verbalization Questionnaire (VVQ) aimed at measuring the attitude to preferentially use either imagery or verbal strategy while processing information. Analyses showed that only the originality score of inventions was positively predicted by the VVQ score: higher VVQ score (indicating the preference to use imagery) predicted originality of inventions. These results showed that the visualization strategy is involved especially in the originality dimension of creative objects production. In light of neuroimaging results, the possibility that different strategies, such those that involve motor processes, affect visual creativity is also discussed.

Luke, D. (2018). Reply to “Ayahuasca turned on my mind’s eye”: A case of acquired versus congenital aphantasia, as evidenced with DMT use? Journal of Psychedelic Studies, 2(2), 97-98. doi: 10.1556/2054.2018.014

In a recent article in this journal, Dos Santos et al. (2018) report a case of ayahuasca use by a man with aphantasia. This account is the first such report of the use of a psychedelic agent by someone with aphantasia. Surprisingly, the case, SE, reported an improvement in their visual imagery following one particular instance of ayahuasca use. In support of Dos Santos et al.’s (2018) favored psychological explanation for improvement and their suggestion that SE’s aphantasia was acquired rather than congenital, this letter reports on a case study of an individual with apparent
congenital aphantasia who has experienced no visual imagery, despite reported having excessively smoked N,Ndimethyltryptamine. It is proposed that the theoretical distinction between acquired and congenital aphantasia be further explored with regard to the use of psychedelics. In addition, further research with psychedelics should include self-report measures that can index aphantasia, such as the Vividness of Visual Imagery questionnaire, as well as behavioral tasks, such as those measuring binocular rivalry.

Visual perception and visual mental imagery, the faculty whereby we can revisualise a visual item from memory, have often been regarded as cognitive functions subserved by common mechanisms. Thus, the leading cognitive model of visual mental imagery holds that visual perception and visual imagery share a number of mental operations, and rely upon common neural structures, including early visual cortices. In particular, a single visual buffer would be used “bottom-up” to display visual percepts and “top-down” to display internally generated images. The proposed neural substrate for this buffer consists of some cortical visual areas organised retinotopically, that is, the striate and extrastriate occipital areas. Empirical support for this model came from the report of brain-damaged patients showing an imagery deficit which parallels a perceptual impairment in the same cognitive domain. However, recent reports of patients showing double dissociations between perception and imagery abilities challenged the perception-imagery equivalence hypothesis from the functional point of view. From the anatomical point of view, the available evidence suggests that occipital damage is neither necessary nor sufficient to produce imagery deficits. On the other hand, extensive left temporal damage often accompanies imagery deficits for object form or colour. Thus, visual mental imagery abilities might require the integrity of brain areas related to vision, but at an higher level of integration than previously proposed.

Although there is ample evidence that motor imagery activates similar cerebral regions to those solicited during actual movements, it is still unknown whether visual (VI) and kinesthetic imagery (KI) recruit comparable or distinct neural networks. The present study was thus designed to identify, through functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3.0 Tesla in 13 skilled imagers, the cerebral structures implicated in VI and KI. Participants were scanned in a perceptual control condition and while physically executing or focusing during motor imagery on either the visual or kinesthetic components of an explicitly known sequence of finger movements. Subjects' imagery abilities were assessed using well-established psychological, chronometric, and new physiological measures from the autonomic nervous system. Compared with the perceptual condition, physical executing, VI, and KI resulted in overlapping (albeit non-identical) brain activations, including motor-related regions and the inferior and superior parietal lobules. By contrast, a divergent pattern of increased activity was observed when VI and KI were compared directly: VI activated predominantly the occipital regions and the superior parietal lobules, whereas KI yielded more activity in motor-associated structures and the inferior parietal lobule. These results suggest that VI and KI are mediated through separate neural systems, which contribute differently during processes of motor learning and neurological rehabilitation. Hum Brain Mapp 30: [2157][2158][2159][2160][2161][2162][2163][2164][2165][2166][2167][2168][2169][2170][2171][2172] 2009. V V C 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

The history of visual sociology is intimately entwined with the evolution of sociology and has dispersed and episodic trajectories across various geographies and historical periods. In this entry, I will present visual sociology not as a subfield of sociology but rather as a para-field, and trace some of the historical routes and roots contributing to the ongoing emergence of post/disciplinary features. Addressing how and in what context the topic emerged will primarily focus on critical moments and thinkers whose contributions nourish the field in important ways but have sometimes been overlooked. To do visual sociology justice, this depiction must be considered a piece in a vastly larger ecology of schools of visual sociology intercontinentally and historically with diverging perspectives that merit being addressed in a more extensive work. The specific aims of this entry are to present critical points of traction that attend specifically to the questions of how this post/discipline matters for the study of images; what particular set of problems are raised; what consequences visual sociology has had that are important for image studies; and generally what visual sociology contributes to understanding images. Readers will not be surprised to find shared approaches, thinkers, and theoretical perspectives with other topic areas.

Recently, the relationship between music and nonmusical cognitive abilities has been highly debated. It has been documented that formal music training would improve verbal, mathematical or visuospatial performance in children. In the experiments described here, we tested if visual perception and imagery abilities were enhanced in adult musicians compared with nonmusicians. In our main experiment, we measured reaction times of subjects who had to detect on which side of a horizontal or a vertical line a target dot was flashed. In the ''imagery'' condition the reference line disappeared before the target dot was presented. In order to accomplish the task, subjects had to keep a mental image of the position of the line until the dot appeared. In the ''perception'' condition, the procedure and stimuli were the same except that the line remained on the screen until the dot was displayed. In both groups, reaction times were shorter for horizontal compared to vertical discrimination, but reaction times were significantly shorter in musicians in all conditions. Moreover, discrimination on the vertical dimension, especially in imaging condition, seemed to be greatly improved on the long term by musical expertise. Simple and choice visual reaction times indicate that this advantage could only be partly explained by better sensorimotor integration in adult musicians.

A new instrument, the Object-Spatial Imagery Questionnaire (OSIQ), was designed to assess individual differences in visual imagery preferences and experiences. The OSIQ consists of two scales: an object imagery scale that assesses preferences for representing and processing colourful, pictorial, and high-resolution images of individual objects and a spatial imagery scale that assesses preferences for representing and processing schematic images, spatial relations amongst objects, and spatial transformations. Across a series of studies, the object imagery scale was significantly correlated with the performance on object imagery tasks; the spatial imagery scale was significantly correlated with the performance on spatial imagery tasks; but neither correlated with measures of intelligence. Additionally, compared to visual artists and humanities professionals, scientists reported higher spatial imagery ratings; however, compared to scientists and humanities professionals, visual artists reported higher object imagery ratings. Thus, the results from the studies supported the predictive, discriminant, and ecological validity of the OSIQ.

Worry as a trait is an individual's general tendency to become worried, which in severe cases is associated with the diagnosis Generalised Anxiety Disorder. Mental time travel (MTT) is the ability to mentally project oneself into one's personal past or future, in terms of memories of personal past events or projections of possible events in the personal future. MTT can be voluntarily initiated or occur involuntarily. The current exploratory study investigated involuntary and voluntary MTT in the context of trait worry, thereby bringing together research on worry and MTT. High (N 020) and low (N 016) worriers recorded involuntary and voluntary autobiographical memories and future projections using a structured diary method. We predicted that MTT in high worriers would show signs of cognitive avoidance, such as reduced emotional intensity, more observer perspective, less visual imagery, or coming up with overgeneral or less self-relevant events. We found only partial support for our hypotheses in that high worriers rated personal memories and future projections lower on measures of self-relevance than did low worriers.