Stephen Kosslyn: Experience

Stephen Kosslyn is American psychologist. Explore interesting quotes on experience.
Stephen Kosslyn: 24 quotes0 likes

“During the late 1970s and early 1980s there was vigorous debate about the nature of visual mental imagery. One position (championed primarily by Pylyshyn, 1973, 1981) held that representations that underlie the experience of mental imagery are the same type as those used in language; the other position (which my colleagues and I supported, e. g., Kosslyn, 1980, 1994) held that these representations serve to depict, not describe, objects. The debate evolved over time… but always centred on the nature of the internal representations that underlie the experience of visualisation.”

Stephen Kosslyn

Stephen M. Kosslyn, "Mental images and the brain." Cognitive Neuropsychology 22.3-4 (2005): p. 333

“Like pictures, images seem to depict information about interval spatial extents. The scanning experiments support the claim that portions of images depict corresponding portions of the represented objects, and that the spatial relations between portions of the image index the spatial relations between the corresponding portions of the imaged objects.”

Stephen Kosslyn

Source: Image and Mind. 1980, p. 51

“A mental image occurs when a representation of the type created during the initial phases of perception is present but the stimulus is not actually being perceived; such representations preserve the perceptible properties of the stimulus and ultimately give rise to the subjective experience of perception.”

Stephen Kosslyn

Source: Image and Mind. 1980, p. 6

“We must begin by distinguishing between visual mental imagery and visual perception: Visual perception occurs while a stimulus is being viewed, and includes functions such as visual recognition (i. e., registering that a stimulus is familiar) and identification (i. e., recalling the name, context, or other information associated with the object). Two types of mechanisms are used in visual perception: “bottom-up” mechanisms are driven by the input from the eyes; in contrast, “top-down” mechanisms make use of stored information (such as knowledge, belief, expectations, and goals). Visual mental imagery is a set of representations that gives rise to the experience of viewing a stimulus in the absence of appropriate sensory input. In this case, information in memory underlies the internal events that produce the experience. Unlike afterimages, mental images are relatively prolonged.”

Stephen Kosslyn

Stephen M. Kosslyn, "Mental images and the brain." Cognitive Neuropsychology 22.3-4 (2005): p. 334