Imagery paradigms: How vulnerable are they to experimenters' expectations?

Intons-Peterson, Margaret Jean

doi:10.1037/0096-1523.9.3.394

Cited by 97 publications

(73 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Instead, all our mental representations are propositional and have the same functional nature. A common criticism made by propositional accounts against mental imagery studies focuses on the danger of revealing the study objective in the instructions to participants and, in doing so, producing the desired behavior (e.g., Intons-Peterson, 1983). We argue that this study cannot be a target of this criticism.…”

Section: Eye Movements and Internal Imagesmentioning

confidence: 89%

Pictures and Spoken Descriptions Elicit Similar Eye Movements During Mental Imagery, Both in Light and in Complete Darkness

2006

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This study provides evidence that eye movements reflect the positions of objects while participants listen to a spoken description, retell a previously heard spoken description, and describe a previously seen picture. This effect is equally strong in retelling from memory, irrespective of whether the original elicitation was spoken or visual. In addition, this effect occurs both while watching a blank white board and while sitting in complete darkness.This study includes 4 experiments. The first 2 experiments measured eye movements of participants looking at a blank white board. Experiment 1 monitors eye movements of participants on 2 occasions: first, when participants listened to a prerecorded spoken scene description; second, when participants were later retelling it from memory. Experiment 2 first monitored eye movements of participants as they studied a complex picture visually, and then later as they described it from memory. The second pair of experiments (Experiments 3 and 4) replicated Experiments 1 and 2 with the only difference being that they were executed in complete darkness. This method of analysis differentiated between eye movements that are categorically correct relative to the positions of the whole eye gaze pattern (global correspondence) and eye movements that are only locally correct (local correspondence). The discussion relates the findings to the current debate on mental imagery.

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Section: Eye Movements and Internal Imagesmentioning

confidence: 89%

Pictures and Spoken Descriptions Elicit Similar Eye Movements During Mental Imagery, Both in Light and in Complete Darkness

2006

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“…A "classic" objection (Pylyshyn, 1981;Intons-Peterson, 1983), often leveled to the whole paradigm of imagery experiments, could be raised for the present study; namely, that subjects are complying with "demand characteristics" of the experiment and recapitulate the behavior of perception simply on the basis of their intuition of what the experimenters are expecting them to do or by "simulating" their past perceptual behavior. Many responses have been given in the past to this type of criticism (e.g., Finke & Pinker, 1982Jolicoeur & Kosslyn, 1985).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye scanpaths during visual imagery reenact those of perception of the same visual scene

2002

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Eye movements during mental imagery are not epiphenomenal but assist the process of image generation. Commands to the eyes for each fixation are stored along with the visual representation and are used as spatial index in a motor-based coordinate system for the proper arrangement of parts of an image. In two experiments, subjects viewed an irregular checkerboard or color pictures of fish and were subsequently asked to form mental images of these stimuli while keeping their eyes open. During the perceptual phase, a group of subjects was requested to maintain fixation onto the screen's center, whereas another group was free to inspect the stimuli. During the imagery phase, all of these subjects were free to move their eyes. A third group of subjects (in Experiment 2) was free to explore the pattern but was requested to maintain central fixation during imagery. For subjects free to explore the pattern, the percentage of time spent fixating a specific location during perception was highly correlated with the time spent on the same (empty) locations during imagery. The order of scanning of these locations during imagery was correlated to the original order during perception. The strength of relatedness of these scanpaths and the vividness of each image predicted performance accuracy. Subjects who fixed their gaze centrally during perception did the same spontaneously during imagery. Subjects free to explore during perception, but maintaining central fixation during imagery, showed decreased ability to recall the pattern. We conclude that the eye scanpaths during visual imagery reenact those of perception of the same visual scene and that they play a functional role.

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“…Because the experimenter was in close contact with the subjects during these procedures, we were careful to use a naive experimenter, as recommended by Intons-Peterson (1983). The experimenter was skilled in performing the task, but was unaware of the major purpose of the experiment.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explorations of creative visual synthesis in mental imagery

1988

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The mental synthesis of visual patterns has been previously studied by instructing subjects to imagine assembling the component parts in specific ways. We report two experiments that show that subjects can often discover recognizable patterns in imagery when the component parts are randomly chosen and are provided without instructions for how they might be assembled. On each trial, the subjects were given a set of three parts, consisting of geometric forms, lines, or alphanumeric characters, and were instructed to close their eyes and imagine combining the parts to make some type of recognizable pattern. They were successful in doing so on about 40 % of the trials. Many of these mentally synthesized patterns were strikingly creative, and few of them could be predicted, either by the experimenter or by the subjects themselves, simply by knowing what the parts were. On the contrary, most of the subjects reported that they had performed the task by imagining various combinations of the parts until a recognizable pattern "emerged." These findings show that visual discoveries in imagery can be reliably induced under appropriate laboratory conditions.

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Imagery paradigms: How vulnerable are they to experimenters' expectations?

Cited by 97 publications

References 17 publications

Pictures and Spoken Descriptions Elicit Similar Eye Movements During Mental Imagery, Both in Light and in Complete Darkness

Pictures and Spoken Descriptions Elicit Similar Eye Movements During Mental Imagery, Both in Light and in Complete Darkness

Eye scanpaths during visual imagery reenact those of perception of the same visual scene

Explorations of creative visual synthesis in mental imagery

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