Controlled Exploration of Alternative Mechanisms in Cognitive Modeling

Overt cognitive behavior arises through a complex interaction between internal, not directly observable, cognitive mechanisms. As there ma

Mental Image Reinterpretation in the Intersection of Conceptual and Visual Constraints

Introduction Mental imagery in general, and mental image reinterpretation in particular, has attracted much attention in the field of cognitive science as it involves a highly debated phenomenon, namely that of seeing an image "in the mind's eye". Alternative accounts for this mental experience range from the `descriptive view' that mental images are non-visual and non-functional (Pylyshyn, 1978, 1981), and the claim that mental images are "overspecified" and therefore unambiguous (Reisberg and Chambers, 1991), to the `depictive view' stating that mental images constitute rich repositories of visually represented information which could support alternative interpretations (Kosslyn, 1978, 1994; Farah, 1988; Peterson et al, 1992). These views take opposite sides in what is called the `imagery debate', and offer different answers to the question of how mental images are represented internally, and whether they constitute a pregnant "sounding board" for non-visua