Stephen Kosslyn: Representation

“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

Support , Nature , Time

“These organizational processes result in our perceptions being structured into units corresponding to objects and properties of objects. It is these larger units that may be stored and later assembled into images that are experienced as quasi-pictorial, spatial entities resembling those evoked during perception itself…. It is erroneous to equate image representations with mental photographs, since this would overlook the fact that images are composed from highly processed perceptual encodings.”

Stephen Kosslyn

Source: Image and Mind. 1980, p. 19

“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

“But because of the way in which depictions represent, there is a correspondence between parts and spatial relations of the representation and those of the object; this structural mapping, which confers a type of resemblance, underlies the way images convey specific content. In this respect images are like pictures. Unlike words and symbols, depictions are not arbitrarily paired with what they represent.”

Stephen Kosslyn

Stephen M. Kosslyn, ‎William L. Thompson, ‎Giorgio Ganis (2006), The Case for Mental Imagery. p. 44; Cited in: Michael R. W. Dawson (2013). Mind, Body, World: Foundations of Cognitive Science. p. 108

Way , Parting

“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

Knowledge , Memory