Negation, conjunction, and disjunction are major building blocks in the formation of concepts. This article presents a new model-based theory of these Boolean components. It predicts that individuals simplify the models of instances of concepts. Evidence corroborates the theory and challenges alternative accounts, such as those based on minimal…

Visualizing spatial material is a cornerstone of human problem solving, but human visualization capacity is sharply limited. To investigate the sources of this limit, we developed a new task to measure visualization accuracy for verbally-described spatial paths (similar to street directions), and implemented a computational process model to…

Five and eight year old children were studied to determine at what age children could represent movement in imagery. Two stimuli were presented; the children had to decide if the stimulus was the same or different in shape. (Author/DEP)

The latency at which objects could be identified by 126 subjects was compared through line drawings (edge-based) or color photography (surface depiction). The line drawing was identified about as quickly as the photograph; primal access to a mental representation of an object can be modeled from an edge-based description. (SLD)

Visual perception and visual imagery are sufficiently representative of external stimuli to enhance retention. (Author)

Debate over whether mental images are visual or spatial representations is seen as based on the false premise that they must be one or the other. Visual neurophysiological research and experiments with a brain-damaged patient (impaired visual representations) suggest that mental imagery has distinct visual and spatial representation components.…

Figures that undergo an implied rotation are remembered as being slightly beyond their final position, a phenomenon called representational momentum. Eight experiments explored the questions of what gets transformed and what types of transformations induce such representational distortions. (GDC)

Several experiments were undertaken with a total of 111 undergraduates. Subjects attempted to imagine how three-dimensional novel wire objects would appear from viewpoints other than that of the subject. Subjects were unable to perform this task without making use of strategies that circumvent the process of visualization. (TJH)

Five experiments investigated how completely and accurately adults remember the visual details of the common United States penny. Subjects had to draw a penny from unaided recall and select the correct representation of a penny. Performance was poor on all tasks. Implications for long-term memory models were discussed. (Author/RD)

Four experiments demonstrated that mental images are functionally equivalent to physical errors of movement in producing changes in visual-motor coordination, at both central and peripheral levels of the visual-motor system. Subjects observed or imagined pointing errors after pointing movements were completed. Imagery vividness ratings were also…

This paper examines the mental processes involved in inferring perspective changes resulting from the rotation of a spatial array or from the rotation of the viewer of that array. Under certain conditions, viewer-rotation problems become easy and array-rotation problems become difficult. Apparently, an array is fixed vis-a-vis the spatial context.…