Postulates of Quasi-Pictorial Image Psychology

1) Images like pictures have special properties. Images and pictures may not be fully spatial in the sense that physical objects are, but they still have some degree a spatiality. Images are quasi-pictorial entities.

2) Images are analogous to perceptual presentations and are processed (at least in part) by the same systems.

3) The cathode ray tube (CRT) metaphor provides a reasonable initial model for properties of mental imagery. The metaphor may have to be abandoned at some point, but it contains many essential traits of imagery.

4) Images play a functional role in cognition They are not a phenomenal.

5) Images are constructed from "chunks" that are stored separately in memory. Images are not pulled from memory as fully formed units.

6) Conceptual information in long-term memory can influence image construction.

7) Images as reconstructed from perception and memory are intrinsically object-directed, or intentional. Photographs are not intentional.

Stephen Kosslyn and James Pomerantz, 1977.

Notes: This set of postulates is also called the pictorialist view or the picture theory.

Proponents include: Stephen Kosslyn, Michael Tye, and Mark Rollins.