Gordon H. Bower (1932-2020).

Memorializes Gordon H. Bower (1932-2020). One of the founders and leaders of cognitive science, Gordon was widely recognized for his contributions to science. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and the American Philosophical Society. Among his many awards were the Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award from the American Psychological Association in 1979 and the National Medal of Science in 2005 "for his unparalleled contributions to cognitive and mathematical psychology, for his lucid analysis of memory and learning, and for his important service to psychology and American science." Gordon was active both at Stanford University, serving as department chair and associate dean of humanities and sciences, and on the national stage, where he served as chief scientific adviser to the National Institute of Mental Health and was president of the Cognitive Science Society, the Psychonomic Society, and the Association for Psychological Science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Does a presentation's medium affect its message? PowerPoint, Prezi, and oral presentations.

Despite the prevalence of PowerPoint in professional and educational presentations, surprisingly little is known about how effective such presentations are. All else being equal, are PowerPoint presentations better than purely oral presentations or those that use alternative software tools? To address this question we recreated a real-world business scenario in which individuals presented to a corporate board. Participants (playing the role of the presenter) were randomly assigned to create PowerPoint, Prezi, or oral presentations, and then actually delivered the presentation live to other participants (playing the role of corporate executives). Across two experiments and on a variety of dimensions, participants evaluated PowerPoint presentations comparably to oral presentations, but evaluated Prezi presentations more favorably than both PowerPoint and oral presentations. There was some evidence that participants who viewed different types of presentations came to different conclusions about the business scenario, but no evidence that they remembered or comprehended the scenario differently. We conclude that the observed effects of presentation format are not merely the result of novelty, bias, experimenter-, or software-specific characteristics, but instead reveal a communication preference for using the panning-and-zooming animations that characterize Prezi presentations.

Mental Imagery: Functional Mechanisms and Clinical Applications.

Mental imagery research has weathered both disbelief of the phenomenon and inherent methodological limitations. Here we review recent behavioral, brain imaging, and clinical research that has reshaped our understanding of mental imagery. Research supports the claim that visual mental imagery is a depictive internal representation that functions like a weak form of perception. Brain imaging work has demonstrated that neural representations of mental and perceptual images resemble one another as early as the primary visual cortex (V1). Activity patterns in V1 encode mental images and perceptual images via a common set of low-level depictive visual features. Recent translational and clinical research reveals the pivotal role that imagery plays in many mental disorders and suggests how clinicians can utilize imagery in treatment.

The heterogeneity of mental representation: Ending the imagery debate.

The possible ways that information can be represented mentally have been discussed often over the past thousand years. However, this issue could not be addressed rigorously until late in the 20th century. Initial empirical findings spurred a debate about the heterogeneity of mental representation: Is all information stored in propositional, language-like, symbolic internal representations, or can humans use at least two different types of representations (and possibly many more)? Here, in historical context, we describe recent evidence that humans do not always rely on propositional internal representations but, instead, can also rely on at least one other format: depictive representation. We propose that the debate should now move on to characterizing all of the different forms of human mental representation.

An outdoor adventure program for young adults with cancer: positive effects on body image and psychosocial functioning.

This study evaluated the psychological effects of an outdoor adventure program on young adult cancer survivors (ages 18-39). The 6-day adventure program included personal instruction and supervision on the basics of kayaking, surfing, or climbing. Compared to a wait-list control group, participants who took part in the program for the first time had improved (relative to pretest) body image, self-compassion and self-esteem, and less depression and alienation. Participants who took part for the second time, though also helped by the program in similar ways, were no better off psychologically than participants who took part for the first time. Possible explanations for the positive effects and their apparent short duration are offered.

Cognitive Style as Environmentally Sensitive Individual Differences in Cognition: A Modern Synthesis and Applications in Education, Business, and Management.

The key aims of this article are to relate the construct of cognitive style to current theories in cognitive psychology and neuroscience and to outline a framework that integrates the findings on individual differences in cognition across different disciplines. First, we characterize cognitive style as patterns of adaptation to the external world that develop on the basis of innate predispositions, the interactions among which are shaped by changing environmental demands. Second, we show that research on cognitive style in psychology and cross-cultural neuroscience, on learning styles in education, and on decision-making styles in business and management all address the same phenomena. Third, we review cognitive-psychology and neuroscience research that supports the validity of the concept of cognitive style. Fourth, we show that various styles from disparate disciplines can be organized into a single taxonomy. This taxonomy allows us to integrate all the well-documented cognitive, learning, and decision-making styles; all of these style types correspond to adaptive systems that draw on different levels of information processing. Finally, we discuss how the proposed approach might promote greater coherence in research and application in education, in business and management, and in other disciplines.

Sparing of spatial mental imagery in patients with hippocampal lesions.

In four experiments, we explored the capacity for spatial mental imagery in patients with hippocampal lesions, using tasks that minimized the role of learning and memory. On all four tasks, patients with hippocampal lesions performed as well as controls. Nonetheless, in separate tests, the patients were impaired at remembering the materials that had been used to assess mental imagery. The findings suggest that the hippocampus is not needed for constructing many forms of spatial imagery but is needed for the formation of long-term memory. In future studies of the neural organization of spatial mental imagery, it will be important to separate the contribution of spatial processing from the contribution of learning and memory.

PowerPoint(®) Presentation Flaws and Failures: A Psychological Analysis.

Electronic slideshow presentations are often faulted anecdotally, but little empirical work has documented their faults. In Study 1 we found that eight psychological principles are often violated in PowerPoint(®) slideshows, and are violated to similar extents across different fields - for example, academic research slideshows generally were no better or worse than business slideshows. In Study 2 we found that respondents reported having noticed, and having been annoyed by, specific problems in presentations arising from violations of particular psychological principles. Finally, in Study 3 we showed that observers are not highly accurate in recognizing when particular slides violated a specific psychological rule. Furthermore, even when they correctly identified the violation, they often could not explain the nature of the problem. In sum, the psychological foundations for effective slideshow presentation design are neither obvious nor necessarily intuitive, and presentation designers in all fields, from education to business to government, could benefit from explicit instruction in relevant aspects of psychology.

Representations in mental imagery and working memory: evidence from different types of visual masks.

Although few studies have systematically investigated the relationship between visual mental imagery and visual working memory, work on the effects of passive visual interference has generally demonstrated a dissociation between the two functions. In four experiments, we investigated a possible commonality between the two functions: We asked whether both rely on depictive representations. Participants judged the visual properties of letters using visual mental images or pictures of unfamiliar letters stored in short-term memory. Participants performed both tasks with two different types of interference: sequences of unstructured visual masks (consisting of randomly changing white and black dots) or sequences of structured visual masks (consisting of fragments of letters). The structured visual noise contained elements of depictive representations (i.e., shape fragments arrayed in space), and hence should interfere with stored depictive representations; the unstructured visual noise did not contain such elements, and thus should not interfere as much with such stored representations. Participants did in fact make more errors in both tasks with sequences of structured visual masks. Various controls converged in demonstrating that in both tasks participants used representations that depicted the shapes of the letters. These findings not only constrain theories of visual mental imagery and visual working memory, but also have direct implications for why some studies have failed to find that dynamic visual noise interferes with visual working memory.

Visual memory and visual mental imagery recruit common control and sensory regions of the brain.

Separate lines of research have shown that visual memory and visual mental imagery are mediated by frontal-parietal control regions and can rely on occipital-temporal sensory regions of the brain. We used fMRI to assess the degree to which visual memory and visual mental imagery rely on the same neural substrates. During the familiarization/study phase, participants studied drawings of objects. During the test phase, words corresponding to old and new objects were presented. In the memory test, participants responded "remember," "know," or "new." In the imagery test, participants responded "high vividness," "moderate vividness," or "low vividness." Visual memory (old-remember) and visual imagery (old-high vividness) were commonly associated with activity in frontal-parietal control regions and occipital-temporal sensory regions. In addition, visual memory produced greater activity than visual imagery in parietal and occipital-temporal regions. The present results suggest that visual memory and visual imagery rely on highly similar--but not identical--cognitive processes.

Understanding the dorsal and ventral systems of the human cerebral cortex: beyond dichotomies.

Traditionally, characterizations of the macrolevel functional organization of the human cerebral cortex have focused on the left and right cerebral hemispheres. However, the idea of left brain versus right brain functions has been shown to be an oversimplification. We argue here that a top-bottom divide, rather than a left-right divide, is a more fruitful way to organize human cortical brain functions. However, current characterizations of the functions of the dorsal (top) and ventral (bottom) systems have rested on dichotomies, namely where versus what and how versus what. We propose that characterizing information-processing systems leads to a better macrolevel organization of cortical function; specifically, we hypothesize that the dorsal system is driven by expectations and processes sequences, relations, and movement, whereas the ventral system categorizes stimuli in parallel, focuses on individual events, and processes object properties (such as shape in vision and pitch in audition). To test this hypothesis, we reviewed over 100 relevant studies in the human neuroimaging and neuropsychological literatures and coded them relative to 11 variables, some of which characterized our hypothesis and some of which characterized the previous dichotomies. The results of forward stepwise logistic regressions supported our characterization of the 2 systems and showed that this model predicted the empirical findings better than either the traditional dichotomies or a left-right difference.

Integrating visual mental images and visual percepts: new evidence for depictive representations.

In two experiments, we used a temporal integration task to investigate visual mental images based on information in short-term memory or generated from information stored in long-term memory (LTM). We specifically asked whether the two sorts of images rely on depictive representations. If mental images rely on depictive representations, then it should be possible to combine mental images and visual percepts into a single representation that preserves the spatial layout of the display. To demonstrate this, participants were asked to generate mental images and then combine them with visual percepts of grids that were partially filled with different numbers of dots. Participants were asked to determine which cell remained empty when the two grids were combined. We contrasted predictions of propositional or verbal description theories with those of depictive theories, and report findings that support the claim that mental images-based on either short-term or LTM-depict information.

Individual differences in spatial mental imagery.

In this article, we report a new image-scanning paradigm that allowed us to measure objectively individual differences in spatial mental imagery--specifically, imagery for location. Participants were asked to determine whether an arrow was pointing at a dot using a visual mental image of an array of dots. The degree of precision required to discriminate "yes" from "no" trials was varied. In Experiment 1, the time to scan increasing distances, as well as the number of errors, increased when greater precision was required to make a judgement. The results in Experiment 2 replicated those results while controlling for possible biases. When greater precision is required, the accuracy of the spatial image becomes increasingly important--and hence the effect of precision in the task reflects the accuracy of the image. In Experiment 3, this measure was shown to be related to scores on the Paper Folding test, on the Paper Form Board test, and on the visuospatial items on Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices--but not to scores on questionnaires measuring object-based mental imagery. Thus, we provide evidence that classical standardized spatial tests rely on spatial mental imagery but not object mental imagery.

Varying the scope of attention alters the encoding of categorical and coordinate spatial relations.

Two types of representations can be used to specify spatial relations: Coordinate spatial relations representations specify the precise distance between two objects, whereas categorical spatial relations representations assign a category (such as above or below) to specify a spatial relation between two objects. Computer simulation models suggest that coordinate spatial relations representations should be easier to encode if one attends to a relatively large region of space, whereas categorical spatial relations should be easier to encode if one attends to a relatively small region of space. We tested these predictions. To vary the scope of attention, we asked participants to focus on the local or global level of Navon letters, and immediately afterwards had them decide whether a dot was within 2.54 cm of a bar (coordinate judgment) or was above or below the bar (categorical judgment). Participants were faster in the coordinate task after they had just focused on the global level of a Navon letter whereas they were faster in the categorical task after they had just focused on the local level. Although we did not test the hemispheric lateralization of these effects, these findings have direct implications for theories of why the cerebral hemispheres differ in their relative ease of encoding the two kinds of spatial relations.

Fear selectively modulates visual mental imagery and visual perception.

Emotions have been shown to modulate low-level visual processing of simple stimuli. In this study, we investigate whether emotions only modulate processing of visual representations created from direct visual inputs or whether they also modulate representations that underlie visual mental images. Our results demonstrate that when participants visualize or look at the global shape of written words (low-spatial-frequency visual information), the prior brief presentation of fearful faces enhances processing, whereas when participants visualize or look at details of written words (high-spatial-frequency visual information), the prior brief presentation of fearful faces impairs processing. This study demonstrates that emotions have similar effects on low-level processing of visual percepts and of internal representations created on the basis of information stored in long-term memory.

Two forms of spatial imagery: neuroimaging evidence.

Spatial imagery may be useful in such tasks as interpreting graphs and solving geometry problems, and even in performing surgery. This study provides evidence that spatial imagery is not a single faculty; rather, visualizing spatial location and mentally transforming location rely on distinct neural networks. Using 3-T functional magnetic resonance imaging, we tested 16 participants (8 male, 8 female) in each of two spatial imagery tasks--one that required visualizing location and one that required mentally rotating stimuli. The same stimuli were used in the two tasks. The location-based task engendered more activation near the occipito-parietal sulcus, medial posterior cingulate, and precuneus, whereas the transformation task engendered more activation in superior portions of the parietal lobe and in the postcentral gyrus. These differences in activation provide evidence that there are at least two different types of spatial imagery.

Imagining predictions: mental imagery as mental emulation.

We argue that the primary function of mental imagery is to allow us to generate specific predictions based upon past experience. All imagery allows us to answer 'what if' questions by making explicit and accessible the likely consequences of being in a specific situation or performing a specific action. Imagery is also characterized by its reliance on perceptual representations and activation of perceptual brain systems. We use this conception of imagery to argue that all imagery is simulation-more specifically, it is a specific type of simulation in which the mental processes that 'run' the simulation emulate those that would actually operate in the simulated scenario. This type of simulation, which we label emulation, has benefits over other types of simulations that merely mimic the content of the simulated scenario.

Neural processes underlying self- and other-related lies: an individual difference approach using fMRI.

Two hypotheses were tested using a novel individual differences approach, which identifies rate-limiting brain regions, that is, brain regions in which variations in neural activity predict variations in behavioral performance. The first hypothesis is that the rate-limiting regions that support the production of lies about oneself (self-related) are partially distinct from those underlying the production of lies about other individuals (other-related). The second hypothesis is that a cingulate-insular-prefrontal network found to be rate-limiting for interference tasks is involved in both types of lies. The results confirmed both hypotheses and supported the utility of this individual differences approach in the study of deception in particular, as well in the study of complex cognitive phenomena more generally.