| Abstract: | Although neglected by cognitive psychologists, mental imagery appears to have played a crucial role in far-reaching scientific developments. Without assuming anything about the internal processes underlying visual images, such images can be studied in relation to their corresponding external objects. The results from a series of previously conducted experiments indicate that mental imagery is remarkably able to substitute for actual perception. Ss made the same judgments about objects in their absence as in their presence; Ss who imagined a particular object were uniquely fast and accurate in discriminatively responding to related external test stimuli, and in the process of imagining a spatial transformation, Ss passed through states with a demonstrable one-to-one relation to corresponding states in the external world. Rules governing spatial structures and transformations, having been incorporated into our perceptual machinery by eons of evolution in a 3-dimensional world, are now at the service of creative thought. (61 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
