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| Research article summary (published 30 Oct 2002): |
Visual mental images can be ambiguous: insights from individual differences in spatial transformation abilities.
Full Abstract
The debate about whether objects in mental images can be ambiguous has produced ambiguous results. In some studies, participants could not reinterpret objects in images, but even in the studies where participants could reinterpret visualized patterns, the results are not conclusive. The present study used a novel task to investigate the reinterpretation of ambiguous figures in imagery, which required the participants to mentally rotate a figure 180 degrees before attempting to "see" an alternate interpretation. In addition, the participants did not know the purpose of the study in advance, nor did they see alternate interpretations of the stimuli; moreover, we explicitly measured individual differences in key mental imagery abilities. Eight of the 44 participants discovered the alternate version while they were memorizing the figure; 16 reported it after mentally rotating an image; and 20 were not able to "see" the alternate version. The ability to rotate images, assessed with an independent task, was highly associated with reports of image reversals, whereas measures of other imagery abilities were not.
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Author information
Author/s: Mast, Fred W (FW); Kosslyn, Stephen M (SM);
Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. fmast(-atsign-)wjh.harvard.edu
Grants: R01 MH60734-01 (Agency:United States NIMH)
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
Journal: Cognition (Cognition), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2002-Nov; vol 86 (issue 1) : pp 57-70
Dates: Created 2002/09/04; Completed 2002/12/04; Revised 2007/11/14;
PMID: 12208651, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)
Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.
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