Imagery

Imagery is associated with memory, perception, and thought. Imagery occurs
in all sensory modes. However, most work on imagery has neglected all
but visual imagery. Concerns with imagery go back to the ancient Greek philosophers.

Plato (c. 428-348 b.c.e.) and Aristotle (384-322 b.c.e.), for example,
compared memory to a block of wax into which one’s thoughts and perceptions
stamp impressions. Aristotle gave imagery an important place in
cognition and argued that people think in mental images. Early experimental
psychologists, such as Wundt, carried on this notion of cognition.

Around 1901, Oswald Külpe (1862-1915) and his students at the University
of Würzburg in Germany challenged these assumptions. However, these
experiments employed introspective techniques, whichWundt and other attacked
as being inconclusive. The controversy led to a rejection of mental
imagery, introspection, and the study of consciousness itself. In the twentieth
century, a movement toward seeing language as the primary analytical
tool and a rejection of the old dominance of imagery came into fashion.
The phenomenology of French philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905-1980) also led to a decline of interest in imagery.

A revival of research in imagery followed the cognitive science revolution
of the 1960’s and 1970’s, contributing greatly to the rising scientific interest
in mental representations. This revival stemmed from research on sensory
deprivation and on hallucinogenic drugs. Studies in the role of imagery
mnemonics also contributed to this reemergence of imagery studies.