Is a Mental Image Really Mental

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Is a Mental Image Really Mental ?
9th EWIC - Pavia - April 26, 2003

• Alessandro Antonietti - Manuela Cantoia - Barbara
  Colombo
• Department of Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology Laboratory
• Catholic University of Sacred Heart of Milan

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The studies presented here originated in the
field of developmental psychology, more precisely
within the investigation of childrens
discovery of the mind. In this area researchers
are interested in- assessing when and how
children come to ascribe mental states to human
beings see subsequent slide ?- assessing what
features children attribute to such mental
states.
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As far as the second issue is concerned,
according to Wellman the criteria which allow a
Western adult to distinguish between a physical
and a mental entity are the following ?
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Wellmans criteria - mental entities do not
afford behavioural-sensory contact - mental
entities do not have public existence - mental
entities do not have temporally consistent
existence - mental entities can be transformed by
thinking about them
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Wellman claimed that these criteria are mastered
by children early in the development. For
instance, in a series of experiments Wellman and
his collaborators presented pre-schoolers both
with the situation of a child who is perceiving
an object that is physically present and with the
situation of a child who is imagining that
object. ? The experimenters asked some
questions about the two situations ?
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Wellman Estes, 1986 Estes et al., 1989 Wolley
Wellman, 1992
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Wellman Estes, 1986 Estes et al., 1989 Wolley
Wellman, 1992
Can you see it with your eyes ? Can you touch it
with your hands ? Can I see it ? Can I touch it
? Can I use it to play ? Just by thinking about
it, can you transform it ?
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The results of the experiments suggested that
even 3-year-olds can give responses consistent
with the previously mentioned criteria ?.
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Wellman Estes, 1986, Exp. 1, p. 913
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Wellmans claim is that children share the same
basic criteria as adults when requested to define
a mental experience - such as imagining an
object. In fact, the rates of the correct
responses recorded in childrens samples were
close to the perfect rates which Wellman expected
to find in adult samples. However, some
fortuitous observations we carried out by asking
adults informally the same questions posed by
Wellman and coworkers to children induced us to
cast doubts about this prediction. Thus, we
decided to investigate systematically adults
reactions to Wellmans questions.
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First of all, we collected all the questions
asked to children in Wellmans experiments, by
referring them to one (the pen) of the objects
considered in such experiments ?. Questions
concerning the temporal consistency of mental
experience were omitted since - as Wellman
admitted - some physical entities - such as smoke
- do not possess such a feature.
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Can you see the pen? Sensory Can you
touch the pen? Contact Can you close
the pen in a drawer? Behavioural Can you
move the pen up-down Can another person see the
pen? Public Existence Can you break the
pen? Possible Transformation Can you
lengthen the pen? Impossible Can you use the
pen Functionto write anything? Is the pen
real? Ontological status
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Then we tried to follow exactly the same
procedure devised by Wellman and to apply it to
undergraduates in different disciplines. Students
attending psychology courses were excluded. The
procedure was as follows ?
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Warm up All participants were presented with a
picture of a smile and they were asked to
close their eyes and to turn the mental image of
that smile into a sad expression.
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Task Look at this pen
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Task Look at this pen Close your eyes and
try to make a picture of that pen in your
head The nine questions were asked
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STUDY 1

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In Wellmans perspective, the expected
percentages should be0 in the first column100
in the last column Surprisingly, undergraduates
were far from reaching the predicted values
?. Responses given to the question Can you
close the pen into a drawer? were not considered
since many participants did not realised the
presence of a drawer in the table used in the
experiment most of them responded no because
they thought there was not a drawer.
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In most cases percentages were not significantly
different between the perceptual and the
imaginative conditions ?.
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Why do various percentages in the first column
differ from 0? Not because participants were mad,
but because they - according to what they
reported when requested to give reasons of their
responses - felt to be limited by social
constraints for instance they said that they
couldnt touch, move, use and, above all, break
the pen since they were not the owner of the
pen.In other cases thy answered no because
they didnt want or desire to carry out the
described action. But, why - contrary to
Wellmans prediction - did undergraduates
attributed features such as sensory-behavioural
contact and so on to the image of the pen?
?(We must also consider the possibility that
part of the no responses were due to the same
extrinsic reasons - social rules, etc. - invoked
to explain no responses in the percpetual
condition).Is it possible that adults perform
worse, from Wellmans point of view, than
pre-schoolers? Further investigation was needed.
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STUDY 2
The second experiment was carried out- to
replicate these findings through a different
design (within subjects)- to ask participants to
justify always their responses The procedure was
the same as in the previous study, but
undergraduates were exposed both to the
perceptual and to the imaginative conditions.The
order of presentation of the two conditions was
randomly changed. After each question,
participants were requested to explain why they
answered either yes or no.
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Percentages in the Ima-Per condition were similar
to those recorded in Study 1. ? However, as far
as some questions are concerned, in the Per-Ima
condition percentages of the expected responses
were higher, near to the predicted values.
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Questions about the Imagined PenPercentages of
Expected Responses under the Two Conditions
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In fact, in some cases the percentages of the
expected responses significantly differed in the
two conditions . ? Presumably, the possibility
to compare the imaginative experience to the
previous perceptual experience induced
participants to recognise the alleged mental
features (lack of sensory-behavioural contact,
availability of impossible transformations,
unreality) of the imagery experience. Explanations
in term of artifacts produced by the repetition
of the same questions can be discarded because
these alleged effects did not affect all
items. However, why did undergraduates persist in
attributing unpredicted features to imagery? The
analysis of the justifications given may
highlight this issue.
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Justifications were classified within a set of
well-defined categories which can be collapsed in
three main broad categories?
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Categorisation of Justification Responses to
Questions about the Imagined Pen
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Justificantions suggested that participants
answered the questions by referring to different
aspects of the imagery experience. According to
the phenomenological tradition, we can
distinguish the physical presence from the
intentional presence. ? The physical presence
concerns external, concrete, material
entities.The intentional presence consists in
the fact that a physical (or even a
abstract-conceptual) entity appears to my
consciousness (in the form of a perceptual,
imagery, memory, thinking and so on,
experience). Within the intentional presence we
can distinguish- the content, that is, what is
present (the intentioned object, noema)- the
process, the act of intentioning that content
(noesi), which may involve the construction of
mental representation.
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PHYSICAL INTENTIONAL
intentioned content intentioning
act (noema)
(noesi)
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When asked to justify their responses,
undergraduates gave reasons which show that their
were thinking about - or the physical object
which is the external referent of their
imaginative experience - or the intentioned
object which is present in their consciousness
through the imaginative experience - or the
mental process and/or representation which is
activated in the imaginative experience and
allows to imagine something.
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An analogy might be useful to clarify these
distinctions. If I see this picture of a pen?
and someone ask me anything about it (for
instance Is it coloured?), I can answer by
referring - or to the physical pen which was the
original model reproduced in the picture - or to
the pen that I see in the picture (which is a pen
with given characteristics - colour, size etc. -
but it is not the physical pen is the physical
pen as it is appears in the picture. By looking
at the picture, I see the pen but Im aware that
what I see is not a three-dimensional, concrete
pen, even though I can imagine to manipulate and
so on the pen I see) - or the pattern of pixels
activated onto this computer screen, which
assumes this given form because of the electronic
processes which occur within this machine and
which produces electromagnetic waves, and so on
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It is worth noticing that references to the third
aspect (the mental) were more frequent in the
Per-Ima condition the contrast with the
perceptual experience hinted participants at
focusing on the mental acts or activities or
representational medium involved in the
imaginative experience. ?
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Justification (Questions about the Imagined
Pen)Percentages of Each Category under the Two
Conditions
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Justification (Questions about the Imagined
Pen)Comparison between the Two Conditions
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Significant associations between yes-no responses
and justifications emerged the expected
responses tended to be given by participants who
thought of the mental process rather than of the
physical or intentioned object. ?
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Imaginative Perceptual ConditionQuestions
about the Imagined Pen Can you lengthen the pen?
X2 97.94, p lt .001
Can another person see the pen?
X2 73.04, p lt .001
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Since references to the so-called mental aspect
of imagery were enhanced by the contrast between
the perceptual and the imaginative experiences,
we decided to deepen this issue by asking
explicitly participants to compare the two
experiences (Study 3).
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STUDY 3
Participants were asked to look at a pen
(Perceptual situation) and then to create a
mental image of that pen (Imaginative
situation). Then they were invited to identify
differences between the two situations. They
were also asked 4 questions Can you touch the
pen? Can you break the pen? Can you lengthen the
pen? Can another person see the pen?
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Questions were asked with reference both to the
perceived pen (Look at the pen can you touch
it?) and to the imagined pen (Try to imagine
the pen can you touch it?). The order of the
two questions within each pair was
counterbalanced 50 of the participants were
asked to answer first about the perceived pen and
then about the imagined pen(Perceptual
Imaginative condition) the other 50 of the
participants were asked to answer first about the
imagined pen and then about the perceived
pen(Imaginative Perceptual condition) After
each question participants were asked to justify
their response.
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Responses to the direct hint at realising
differences between the perceptual and
imaginative situations were classified into the
following categories? Also in this case it
was found that undergraduates made reference to
different aspects in order to differentiate the
perceptual and the imaginative experiences. Sponta
neously, however, they did not identified the
mental aspects as the differentiating
element. We also notice that about 20 of
participants failed to find differences between
the two situations.
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Percentages of yes-no responses were not
significantly different in the two conditions,
but were higher than those recorded in the
previous studies. ? It is likely that the
request to detect possible differences between
the perceptual and the imaginative situations
induced participants to differentiate their
responses about the two situations.
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Expected Responses to the Questions about the
Imagined Pen Percentages under the Two Conditions
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Justification based on mental aspects were more
frequent in Study 3 as compared to Study 2 ?,
with few significant differences between the two
conditions. ? Also these findings can be
interpreted as consequences of the contrast
effect produced by the initial invitation to
compare the perceptual and imaginative
situations.
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Justifications (Questions about the Imagined
Pen)Percentages of Each Category under the Two
Conditions
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Justification (Questions about the Imagined
Pen)Comparison between the Two Conditions
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CONCLUSIONS The results of the 3 studies showed
that adults, asked the same questions which
Wellman and collaborators addressed to children,
failed to give spontaneously the predicted
responses. This suggests that adults fail to
ascribe to the imaginative experience mental
features such as lack of sensory-behavioural
contact, public existence, unreality, and so
on. This occurs since people, when requested to
form a picture in their head of an object and
asked about the features of such a picture,
make reference to different aspects of the
imaginative experience.
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More precisely, adults - but also children, if
not biased (Cantoia, 2002) - interpret the
questions either as concerning the imagined
object or as concerning the image of the object
(which are not the same thing). The imagined
object tends to be perceived as characterised by
the same properties and susceptible of the same
actions (even though in an imaginative form) as
the corresponding physical object. Only the
image of the object - and the processes which
support its generation, maintenance, and
manipulation - tends to match the criteria for
the mental proposed by Wellman.
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However, persons can be oriented to think to the
mental counterpart of the imagined object when
they have the possibility, or are induced, to
compare perceptual and imaginative
experiences. In this case, the two kinds of
experiences- share the same physical object
and- make reference to the (approximately) same
intentioned object. Consequently, differences can
be found only in the way (either perceptual or
imaginative) in which the object is intentioned,
namely, in the mental processes or
representations which accompany those
intentioning acts.
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IMPLICATIONS Highly dramaticDo imagery
experiments concern images of objects,
environments, scenes etc. or imagined objects,
environments, scenes etc.? Less dramaticDo
experimenters interpret findings of imagery
studies in terms of images of objects etc. or in
terms of imagined objects etc? Mildly
dramaticDo participants in imagery experiments
answer, when requested to report their
imaginative experiences, by referring to images
of objects etc. or to imagined objects?