Neither pictures nor propositions: what can we learn from a mental image?

In an earlier paper, we reported that subjects have great difficulty in finding alternative construals of their own mental images. In the present paper, we examine how subjects can nonetheless learn from their mental images. We argue that mental images, like percepts, are meaningful depictions. As such, mental images do depict appearance but are also inherently understood in a certain way, and this understanding influences the phenomenal appearance of the represented form. This, in turn, governs what the form will be seen to resemble and what the form is likely to call from memory. We report four experiments in support of this view. In each experiment, subjects are briefly shown outline shapes and asked to form a mental image of each shape. Subjects are then asked what familiar form the imaged shape resembles. Subjects routinely find target shapes in their images when the target is compatible both with the imaged geometry and with how that geometry is organized and understood. When the sought-for target is compatible with image geometry but not with how the image is understood, subjects reliably fail to find the target shape in their images.