Pearson, David G. (2007). Mental imagery and creative thought. Proceedings of the British Academy, 147, 187-212.

@Article{Pearson2007,
  author = 	 {Pearson, David G.},
  title = 	 {Mental Imagery and Creative Thought},
  journal = 	 {Proceedings of the British Academy},
  year = 	 {2007},
  volume = 	 {147},
  pages = 	 {187--212}
}

Author of the summary: Michael Forceno, 2010, mforceno@connect.carleton.ca

Cite this paper for:

• Mental imagery for facilitation of creative insights
• Imagery linked to successful performance of visual tasks [188]
• Mental Synthesis: combining ideas into new constructs [190]
• Mental images are used when manipulating and interpreting constructions of various symbols [191]
• Creative synthesis
• Articulatory suppression - "continuous repeating a word or phrase out loud to inhibit the active silent rehearsal of verbal material" (Smyth et al, 1989) [195]
• Image reference frames [201]
• Phenomenology of mental imagery [206]

In this paper, Pearson reviews a variety of experiments relating to mental imagery and creative thought and discusses the extent that representational theories of imagery have failed to account for the phenomenlogical experience of these images. Mental imagery has long played a part in creative thought including scientists such as Albert Einstein, Michael Faraday, Friedrich August von Kekule, and Stephen Hawking. "If imagery facilitates creative discovery then it is able be studied under controlled conditions."

Finke et al (1989) Guided Mental Synthesis

• Participants would manipulate simple symbols in response to a sequence of verbal instruction and would then draw the image on a sheet of paper
• If the sequence was followed correctly: resulting image resembled something familiar
• Researchers were interested in whether the participants would be able to recognize the patterns prior to drawing the image [191]
• able to interpret their mental images without an additional external aid
• "the mental image itself was sufficient to provide the basis for the discovery"
• Potential criticism: participants guessed the resulting object based on the initial symbols
  • unlikely because participants' reconigition of the final pattern diminished if instructions were not followed and as well due to a control study where the researchers asked the participants to guess the image after each instruction
  • therefore the results are consistent with the theory that mental images are the basis for these emergent patterns and not simply a guessing strategy which is not dependent on the manipulation and interpretation of symbols

Finke and Slayton (1988) Creative Synthesis Task

• Guided Mental Synthesis had many problems:
  • it wasn't spontaneous
  • images were constructed from explicit instruction which is drastically different from how true creative reasoning works [192]
• Creative synthesis task:
  • Were told to memorize the symbols. Were then asked to form images from a random set of symbols into a recognizable pattern
  • Only allowed to change size and orientation - not distort the shape
  • Results showed that participants were able to construct many symbols this way in a short time frame - 2 minutes [193]

Working Memory Models

• Baddeley and Hitch (1974)
  • Separated working Memory into "...three separate, limited-capacity components: the phonological loop, the visuospatial sketchpad, and the central executive" [194]
  • Visuospatial component is involved in the generation of mental images (Baddeley and Andrade, 2000) [195] as well maintaining the components of the visual store

Pearson et al (1999) Towards a model of Creative Synthesis

• Attempt at interpreting performance on the Creative Synthesis task using the multi-component working memory theory [195]
• Participants asked to carry out mental synthesis while actively participating in secondary tasks designed to use up the resources of the spatial, visual, and verbal components of the working memory system.
• Dual Task Principle - tasks which compete for the mental resources of similar components will have a greater interference than tasks which operate across multiple components of working memory
• Exception: Visuospatial tasks
  • Visual task performance relies solely on visuospatial cognitive resources [196]
  • However, Pearson et al. found that concurrent articulatory suppression produced more interference than either spatial or visual secondary tasks [197]
  • "interferes with the verbal rehearsal of the presented symbols, thereby placing a greater load on the other components of the working memory system and reducing participants' overall performance on the creative synthesis task" [197]

Pearson's Model of Creative Synthesis

• Consists of Presented Stimuli (ie. "Circle, square, D,D, rectangle")[197]
• Stimuli enter the Phonological Loop (temporary storage and rehearsal)
• Stimuli are then transferred back and forth between the Phonological loop and Visual Buffer (conscious imagery / central executive)  
• During this time transformations are being performed upon the stimuli
• These transformations are then passed back and forth between the Visual Buffer and Visual Cache (temporary storage and rehearsal)
• Finally an image is synthesized from the component stimuli

• If the model is accurate: should be able to predict that by which method stimuli are presented to participants during a mental synthesis task may have influence on task performance[198]
• Prediction is based on the fact that there are two distinct routes by which an image can be created by the mind: Visual Trace and Long-term Store
• Visual trace: immediate perceptual information
• Long-term store: image generated from memory of previous objects [199]
• A number of studies have demonstrated performance differences between visual trace and long-term memory:
  • Cornoldi et al (1998): long-term memory images have less colour than those made from visual trace
  • Hitch el at (1995): images from short term memory preserve more surface perceptual information than those from long-term memory
  • Brandimonte et al: performance improved when learning the symbols was accompanied with articulatory suppression
    • verbal representations can impair the ability to make novel discoveries from mental images alone [200]
  • Pearson and Logie (2004): mental synthesis from visual trace is more effective than synthesis from long-term memory [201]

The Phenomenology of Imagery