Denis Michel
Groupe Cognition Humaine, LIMSI-CNRS, Université de Paris-Sud, BP 133, 91403 Orsay, France.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2008 Jan;127(1):197-210. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2007.05.006. Epub 2007 Jul 20.
In two experiments, undergraduates processed a verbal description of a spatial configuration on the periphery of which six landmarks were located. The participants were then invited to generate visual images of the configuration, and to visualize the distances between pairs of landmarks. Their task consisted of deciding which of the two specified distances was longer. The results showed that as the magnitude of the differences in distance increased, the frequency of correct responses was higher, and response times were shorter. This pattern of results is characteristic of the symbolic distance effect, which is especially interesting in the present experiment where the images generated by the participants were constructed after processing a verbal description (rather than reconstructed from previous perceptual experience). In order to assess the role of visual imagery in the comparison of distances, the performance of participants with the highest scores on a visuo-spatial test (the Minnesota Paper Form Board) was compared to that of those with the lowest scores. High visuo-spatial imagers had higher frequencies of correct responses and shorter response times than the low imagers in the distance-comparison task. They outperformed their counterparts even more clearly on the items where the distance differences were the smallest, suggesting that visual imagery is especially important for items requiring the most attentive examination of a visual image. These data are interpreted as reflecting the fact that visual imagery mediates the process of mentally comparing distances, even when learning has been essentially based on verbal input. These findings support the view that a representation constructed from a verbal description may incorporate metric information about distances, and they offer evidence suggesting that visual images constructed from descriptive texts have genuine analog properties.
在两项实验中，大学生处理了一段关于空间构型的文字描述，该构型的周边有六个地标。随后，参与者被要求生成该构型的视觉图像，并想象地标之间的距离。他们的任务是判断所指定的两个距离中哪一个更长。结果显示，随着距离差异的增大，正确反应的频率更高，反应时间更短。这种结果模式是符号距离效应的特征，在本实验中尤其有趣，因为参与者生成的图像是在处理文字描述后构建的（而非从先前的感知经验中重建）。为了评估视觉表象在距离比较中的作用，将在视觉空间测试（明尼苏达纸型板测试）中得分最高的参与者的表现与得分最低的参与者的表现进行了比较。在距离比较任务中，高视觉空间表象者比低表象者有更高的正确反应频率和更短的反应时间。在距离差异最小的项目上，他们的表现比低表象者更为突出，这表明视觉表象对于需要最仔细检查视觉图像的项目尤为重要。这些数据被解释为反映了这样一个事实，即视觉表象介导了在脑海中比较距离的过程，即使学习基本上是基于语言输入。这些发现支持了这样一种观点，即从文字描述构建的表征可能包含有关距离的度量信息，并且它们提供了证据表明从描述性文本构建的视觉图像具有真正的类似物属性。
