Imagery, Language and Visuo-Spatial Thinking discusses the remarkable human ability to use mental imagery in everyday life: from helping plan actions and routes to aiding creative thinking; from making sense of and remembering our immediate environment to generating pictures in our minds from verbal descriptions of scenes or people. The book also considers the important theme of how individuals differ in their ability to use imagery. With contributions from leading researchers in the field, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in cognitive psychology, cognitive science and cognitive neuropsychology.

Reviewing the state-of-the-art research in the field of imagery, visuo-spatial memory, spatial representation and language, with special emphasis on their interactions, the volume addresses the issues in depth, presenting new evidence through contributions from both behavioural and neuroimaging studies.

The ability to navigate across town, comprehend an animated display of the functioning of the human heart, view complex multivariate data on a company's website, or to read an architectural blueprint and form a three-dimensional mental picture of a house are all tasks involving visuospatial thinking. The field of visuospatial thinking is a relatively diverse interdisciplinary research enterprise. An understanding of visuospatial thinking, and in particular, how people represent and process visual and spatial information, is relevant not only to cognitive psychology but also education, geography, architecture, medicine, design computer science/artificial intelligence, semiotics and animal cognition. The goal of this book, first published in 2005, is to present a broad overview of research on visuospatial thinking that can be used by researchers as well as students interested in this topic in both basic research and applied/naturalistic contexts.

Publisher Description

The relationships between perception and imagery, imagery and spatial processes, memory and action: These are the main themes of this text The interest of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience on imagery and spatial cognition is remarkably increased in the last decades. Different areas of research contribute to the clarification of the multiple cognitive processes subserving spatial perception and exploration, and to the definition of the neurophysiological mechanisms underpinning these cognitive functions. The aim of this book is to provide the reader (post-graduate students as well as experts) with a complete overview of this field of research. It illustrates the way how brain, behaviour and cognition interact in normal and pathological subjects in perceiving, representing and exploring space. (Series B).

The nature of mental images and their relation to language has caused controversy amongst psychologists for years, and the so-called "imagery debate" is still unresolved. Fresh light is now being shed on this topic using recent findings in neuroscience and the development of behavioural studies. Reviewing state-of-the-art research in the field of imagery, visuo-spatial memory, spatial representation and language, with special emphasis on their interactions, the volume shows how, and to what extent, findings from the studies on imagery can positively influence and enrich other psychological areas such as: Working memory Space and time representation Language and embodiment Chapter 9, written by Michel Denis, to whom this book is dedicated, analyses more than three decades of research, and outlines the shared scientific journey of friendship and discovery that has developed across various cognitive topics, all of which are linked to, and inspired by, imagery conceptualization. This is the only book to present a critical outline of research on these topics in a single volume, and as such will be invaluable to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers in such fields as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computer science and neuropsychology.