Assessing the effects of mental imagery (and its absence) on language and the perception of time. Experimental psycholinguistic research on aphantasia

认知语言学研究表明，语言依赖于认知的许多方面，而不是利用大脑的一个特定的，孤立的部分（Langacker 2002）。此外，这项研究已经解决了人类感知时间的各种方式;发现文化和语言模式可以影响说话者感知这个抽象概念的方式（Boroditsky等人2010）。这些研究还表明，当涉及到认知任务时，人类的大脑是可塑的，甚至语言本身也可以成为改变的催化剂。心理意象构成了我们视觉想象的基础，自动化和认知心理模拟在我们的感知、记忆、创造力和幻想中发挥着巨大的作用;研究表明，心理意象对整体认知至关重要（Kosslyn等人，2006年），然而，心理意象及其背后的神经过程仍有许多未知的方面。虽然心理意象和心灵之眼已经受到了跨领域的关注，作为心理学和神经科学，它们的缺失仍然是一个未充分研究的现象。我们中的许多人都认为共轭图像的能力是理所当然的，但最近完全无法产生图像最终被命名为aphantasia（Zeman等人。2015）。失语症患者不能主动或自动地产生心理意象，也没有视觉记忆可供借鉴。研究失语症对于心理意象的认知重要性，以及它们的存在或缺失如何影响我们的感知，应该是非常有洞察力的。这个跨学科的项目旨在用经验性的实验方法分析失语症患者，并通过与对照组参与者的比较，研究心理意象（及其缺失）是否影响时间感知和语言认知联系。

Cognitive linguistic research suggests that language relies upon many aspects of cognition, ratherthan utilising a specific, isolated part of the brain (Langacker 2002). Furthermore, this research hasaddressed the variety of ways humans perceive time; finding that culture and language patterns canaffect the way speakers perceive this abstract concept (Boroditsky et al. 2010). These studies haveadditionally shown that the human brain is malleable when it comes to cognitive tasks, and that evenlanguage itself can be the catalyst for enacting change.Mental imagery forms the basis of our visual imaginations, where both automated and cognizantmental simulations play a huge role in our perception, memory, creativity and reverie; scholarssuggest mental imagery is vital for cognition on the whole (Kosslyn et al. 2006), yet there are stillmany unknown aspects to mental imagery and the neurological processes behind it.Whilst mental imagery and the mind's eye have received attention across fields such as psychologyand the neurosciences, their absence remains an understudied phenomenon. The ability to conjuremental images is one that many of us take for granted, yet recently the complete inability to producemental imagery was finally named as aphantasia (Zeman et al. 2015). Those with aphantasia cannotwillingly or automatically produce mental imagery, and have no visual memory to draw from.Researching aphantasia should prove to be extremely insightful as to the cognitive importance ofmental images, and how their presence or absence affects our perception.This interdisciplinary project aims to analyse those with aphantasia using empirically testedexperimental methods, and through comparison to control participants, investigating whether mentalimagery (and its absence) affects the perception of time and the cognitive link to language.