Cognitive Style: Individual Differences in Object and Spatial Imagery

认知风格：物体和空间意象的个体差异

• 批准号: 0411725
• 负责人: Stephen Kosslyn
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Harvard University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-09-01 至 2009-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0411725&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Cognitive; Style; Individual; Differences; Object

The proposed research program will explore a series of questions concerning spatial imagery abilities in the context of cognitive styles. A cognitive style is a psychological dimension that specifies consistencies in how an individual acquires and processes information. Although research suggests that cognitive styles have important implications for educational theory and practice, many previous studies were not motivated by a theory or general framework that species the dimensions along which cognitive processing may vary, and as a consequence suffered from arbitrary distinctions and overlapping dimensions. For instance, although a number of studies have found that the verbal subscale of standard visualizer/verbalizer questionnaires does indeed correlate with verbal ability, the visual subscale is generally only weakly correlated with results on visual/spatial aptitude tests. However, current research on visual information processing suggests that there are actually two kinds of visualizers-those who construct vivid, concrete shape-based images of individual objects (object visualizers), and those who construct images that represent spatial relations among objects and transformations of objects (spatial visualizers). These two types of visualizers display very different patterns of performance on visual-spatial tasks, including tests of practical knowledge, such as the ability to interpret graphs or solve geometry pr9blems. This distinction is rooted in the brain: Neuropsychological findings have revealed that higher-level visual areas of the brain are divided into two functionally and anatomically distinct pathways, the object and spatial relations pathways. This proposal. has three major objectives. First, the investigators plan to examine the development of imagery skills as children age. They will explore the possibility that spatial and object imagery have different courses and rates of development. Second, they will conduct behavioral and fMRI studies to examine how practice using imagery changes performance as well as neural activity in the brain. Finally, they will examine how people in different professions differ in their mental imagery abilities and cognitive styles.

本研究将探讨认知风格背景下空间意象能力的一系列问题。认知风格是一个心理维度，它规定了个体如何获取和处理信息。尽管研究表明认知风格对教育理论和实践具有重要意义，但许多先前的研究并没有一个理论或一般框架来区分认知加工可能存在的沿着维度，因此存在任意区分和重叠维度。例如，尽管许多研究发现标准的视觉化者/言语化者问卷的言语分量表确实与言语能力相关，但视觉分量表通常与视觉/空间能力倾向测试的结果只有微弱的相关性。然而，目前视觉信息处理的研究表明，实际上有两种视觉化者-那些谁构建生动，具体的形状为基础的个别对象的图像（对象视觉化者），和那些谁构建的图像，表示对象之间的空间关系和对象的转换（空间视觉化者）。这两种类型的可视化工具在视觉空间任务中表现出非常不同的模式，包括实践知识的测试，例如解释图形或解决几何问题的能力。这种区别植根于大脑：神经心理学的研究结果表明，大脑的高级视觉区域分为两个功能和解剖学上不同的通路，对象和空间关系通路。这个提议有三个主要目标。首先，研究人员计划检查儿童年龄的图像技能的发展。他们将探讨空间和对象的图像有不同的课程和发展速度的可能性。其次，他们将进行行为和功能磁共振成像研究，以检查如何使用图像的练习改变性能以及大脑中的神经活动。最后，他们将研究不同职业的人在心理意象能力和认知风格方面的差异。