Freyd J J, Finke R A
Am J Psychol. 1984 Fall;97(3):323-41.
In the first experiment we showed that difficult length discriminations can be facilitated by imagining a visual context frame that serves to emphasize small length differences between pairs of horizontal and vertical lines. This facilitative effect of imagery cannot be attributed to response-bias or expectancy effects because we have separated the object to be imagined from the objects to be discriminated. In the second experiment we showed that real context facilitates the line-length discrimination in much the same way as imagined context does. The results from these experiments suggest that (a) functional interactions can occur between imagery and perception at feature-processing levels of the visual system, and (b) there is a functional equivalence between the imagination and perception of helpful context. Results of a third experiment suggest that although imagery and perception may be functionally equivalent at the levels of visual processing where parts of patterns are combined, they are not functionally equivalent at the lower levels of simple detection.
在第一个实验中，我们表明，通过想象一个视觉背景框架可以促进困难的长度辨别，该框架用于强调水平和垂直线对之间的小长度差异。意象的这种促进作用不能归因于反应偏差或预期效应，因为我们已经将待想象的对象与待辨别的对象区分开来。在第二个实验中，我们表明真实背景促进线长辨别的方式与想象背景非常相似。这些实验的结果表明：（a）在视觉系统的特征处理水平上，意象和感知之间可以发生功能交互作用；（b）有益背景的想象和感知之间存在功能等效性。第三个实验的结果表明，尽管在意象和感知在组合模式部分的视觉处理水平上可能在功能上等效，但在简单检测的较低水平上它们在功能上并不等效。
