ISSN 0439-755X
CN 11-1911/B
主办:中国心理学会
   中国科学院心理研究所
出版:科学出版社

心理学报 ›› 2012, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (7): 910-923.

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任务信息通达对视觉表象眼动的影响

何立国;周爱保;郭田友;鲍旭辉   

  1. (1陕西师范大学心理学院, 陕西省行为与认知神经科学重点实验室, 西安 710062)
    (2深圳大学心理学系, 深圳 518060) (3西北师范大学教育学院, 兰州 730070)
  • 收稿日期:2011-12-07 修回日期:1900-01-01 发布日期:2012-07-28 出版日期:2012-07-28
  • 通讯作者: 周爱保

Effect of Task Information Accessibility on Visual Imagery Eye-movement

HE Li-Guo;ZHOU Ai-Bao;GUO Tian-You;BAO Xu-Hui   

  1. (1School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710062, China)
    (2Department of Psychology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 516080, China)
    (3School of Education, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China)
  • Received:2011-12-07 Revised:1900-01-01 Online:2012-07-28 Published:2012-07-28
  • Contact: ZHOU Ai-Bao

摘要: 通过两个实验探讨了视觉表象任务信息的通达对表象加工眼动的影响。结果表明, 在低通达条件下, 表象任务的眼动复制了知觉任务的眼动; 随着表象任务信息通达水平的提高, 眼动的注视点平均持续时间、平均眼跳距离和平均眼跳时间会发生规律性变化; 眼动控制与任务信息通达水平对表象眼动的影响存在不同的机制。实验结果佐证了眼动在视觉表象中起机能性作用的观点。

关键词: 视觉表象, 眼动, 信息通达, 视觉表征

Abstract: Visual imagery is an important visuo-spatial representation, which has the same mental storage characteristics with visual perception (Romke, Kosslyn & Hamel, 1997), sharing the same brain mechanisms with visual perception (Kosslyn, Thompson & Alpert, 1997; Ganis, Thompson & Kosslyn, 2004). As is known to all, fixation is the primary source of visual perception information, and eye movement is very important to visual perception. So, does eye movement also play an important role in the visual imagery processing? There are two contrasting accounts for the phenomenon. The functional account hypothesizes that the encoding of each eye fixation during perception process participates, as an index in the location of the space in the subsequent image generation.
In contrast, the epiphenomenal account views eye movements during imagery processing as the passive “spill over” from covert shifts of attention during the stage of image inspection, subsequently to its generation (Laeng & Teodorescu, 2002). Early studies (Jacobson, 1932; Lorens & Darrow, 1962) reported increased oculomotor activity during visualization and during mental arithmetic. Recently, researchers found that subjects who fixed their gaze centrally during perception did the same spontaneously during imagery. The subjects who are free to explore during perception, but maintaining central fixation during imagery, showed decreased ability to recall the pattern. They concluded that the eye scan paths during visual imagery reenact those of perception of the same visual scene and eye movements during mental imagery are not epiphenomenal but assist the process of image generation (Brandt & Stark, 1997; Laeng & Teodorescu, 2002). Actually, whether regular eye movements promote the representation processing relies on the level of eye movement regularity of change that regular change task information accessibility of visual imagery would cause. If task information accessibility level change inevitably leads to eye movement regularity changes, it can be inferred that eye movements play a functional role in visual imagery.
Forty postgraduates, from 25 to 30 years old, attended two experiments respectively. All participants didn’t know the purpose of the experiment and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Stimulus presentation and data collection were controlled by two microcomputers. Eye movements were recorded by means of the Eye Tracking Device made by ASL with a sample frequency of 256Hz. Referencing Brandt & Stark (1997) and Laeng & Teodorescu (2002) study, the “perception-imagery” dual task experimental paradigm was applied to compare the change of eye-movement parameters in different task information accessibility level in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, task information accessibility effect was dissociated from eye controlling in order to see how task information accessibility levels influence visual imagery eye movements.
The results revealed that under the low task information accessibility, the eye movements in visual imagery duplicate the pattern in perception, and eye-movement parameters, such as average fixation, saccade duration, saccade distance, will change in accordance with task information accessibility levels. The second experiment replicated successfully the findings of the first experiment. Eye-movement control and task information accessibility has different influence on visual imagery processing. The eye movements in visual imagery not only duplicate the pattern in perception, but also change depending on the level of task information accessibility. That is to say, eye movements play a functional role in visual imagery.

Key words: visual imagery, eye movement, information accessibility, visual representation