From: Scientific American
Images in the Mind’s Eye Are Quick Sketches That Lack Simple, Real-World Details
Here were the simple instructions given by a Harvard University assistant professor to people participating in a recent cognitive science study:
“Imagine the following scene. Visualize it in your mind’s eye, as vividly as you can: a person walks into a room and knocks a ball off a table.”
The professor, Tomer Ullman, then asked those in the study about nine properties of their mental images, including the color and size of the ball, the shape and size of the table, and the person’s hair color and height. If you are anything like the people in the study, you only visualized a subset of all of these properties. Did you see how big the ball was? How about the person’s hair color? Most participants visualized the former but not the latter.
…
Read the whole story (subscription may be required): Scientific American
More of our Members in the Media >
APS regularly opens certain online articles for discussion on our website. Effective February 2021, you must be a logged-in APS member to post comments. By posting a comment, you agree to our Community Guidelines and the display of your profile information, including your name and affiliation. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations present in article comments are those of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of APS or the article’s author. For more information, please see our Community Guidelines.
Please login with your APS account to comment.