Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

mentally counting the number of windows that are displayed in it. Mental imagery
is also crucially important for human memory (Paivio, 1969, 1971, 1986; Yates, 1966):
we are better at remembering items if we can create a mental image of them. Indeed,
the construction of bizarre mental images, or of images that link two or more items
together, is a standard tool of the mnemonic trade (Lorayne, 1985, 1998, 2007;
Lorayne & Lucas, 1974).
An early achievement of the cognitive revolution in psychology (Miller, 2003;
Vauclair & Perret, 2003) was a rekindled interest in studying mental imagery, an
area that had been neglected during the reign of behaviourism (Paivio, 1971, 1986).
In the early stages of renewed imagery research, traditional paradigms were modified
to solidly establish that concept imageability was a key predictor of verbal
behaviour and associative learning (Paivio, 1969). In later stages, new paradigms
were invented to permit researchers to investigate the underlying nature of mental
images (Kosslyn, 1980; Shepard & Cooper, 1982).
For example, consider the relative complexity evidence obtained using the
mental rotation task (Cooper & Shepard, 1973a, 1973b; Shepard & Metzler, 1971).
In this task, subjects are presented with a pair of images. In some instances, the
two images are of the same object. In other instances, the two images are different
(e.g., one is a mirror image of the other). The orientation of the images can also be
varied—for instance, they can be rotated to different degrees in the plane of view.
The angular disparity between the two images is the key independent variable. A
subject’s task is to judge whether the images are the same or not; the key dependent
measure is the amount of time required to respond.
In order to perform the mental rotation task, subjects first construct a mental
image of one of the objects, and then imagine rotating it to the correct orientation
to enable them to judge whether it is the same as the other object. The standard
finding in this task is that there is a linear relationship between response latency
and the amount of mental rotation that is required. From these results it has been
concluded that “the process of mental rotation is an analog one in that intermediate
states in the process have a one-to-one correspondence with intermediate stages in
the external rotation of an object” (Shepard & Cooper, 1982, p. 185). That is, mental
processes rotate mental images in a holistic fashion, through intermediate orientations,
just as physical processes can rotate real objects.
Another source of relative complexity evidence concerning mental imagery is
the image scanning task (Kosslyn, 1980; Kosslyn, Ball, & Reisler, 1978). In the most
famous version of this task, subjects are first trained to create an accurate mental
image of an island map on which seven different locations are marked. Then subjects
are asked to construct this mental image, focusing their attention at one of
the locations. They are then provided with a name, which may or may not be one
of the other map locations. If the name is of another map location, then subjects
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