Abstract
Research on memory and language has been historically studied to understand the role of verbal memory in language. But it is far from clear how visual memory is involved in acquiring knowledge and language. In this review, we focus on the visuospatial sketchpad from the working memory model, which explains the perception and storage of visual representations to process language. It is significant from the light of findings that verbal memory is necessary for language; similarly, visual memory is also crucial in the processing and comprehension of language. To this point, we review the analysis of dual-coding theory, which suggests that verbal and visual memory are equally crucial for language processing. Further, the visual memory turns into visual or mental imagery that acts as an offline perception in the absence of sensory input. For people with aphantasia, this mental imagery is absent or impaired, leading to difficulties in language comprehension. Therefore, studying the importance of visual memory and mental imagery in language processing is necessary. Taken together, the present paper provides a broad-spectrum understanding of the mind’s eye that develops and comprehends the information with mental imageries. The article explains the biological pathway of visual representations in the visual cortex, forming visual memory and mental imageries that eventually help in learning.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data Availability
Not applicable.
References
Aben, B., Stapert, S., & Blokland, A. (2012). About the distinction between working memory and short-term memory. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00301
Aboitiz, F., Aboitiz, S., & García, R. R. (2010). The phonological loop: A key innovation in human evolution. Current Anthropology. https://doi.org/10.1086/650525
Acheson, D. J., & MacDonald, M. C. (2009). Verbal working memory and language production: Common Approaches to the serial ordering of verbal information. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 50–68. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014411
Aggleton, J. P., & Nelson, A. J. D. (2020). Distributed interactive brain circuits for object-in-place memory: A place for time? Brain and Neuroscience Advances, 4, 239821282093347. https://doi.org/10.1177/2398212820933471
Albers, A. M., Kok, P., Toni, I., Dijkerman, H. C., & De Lange, F. P. (2013). Shared representations for working memory and mental imagery in early visual cortex. Current Biology, 23(15), 1427–1431. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2013.05.065
Allen, R. J., Baddeley, A. D., & Hitch, G. J. (2006). Is the binding of visual features in working memory resource-demanding? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135(2), 298–313. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.135.2.298
Arslan, B., & Göksun, T. (2021). Ageing, working memory, and mental imagery: Understanding gestural communication in younger and older adults. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(1), 29–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820944696
Baddeley, A. (1996). Exploring the central executive system. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 49(1), 5–28. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1589-3
Baddeley, A. D. (2000). The episodic buffer: A new component of working memory? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(11), 417–423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apm.2016.02.027
Baddeley, A. (2003). Working memory: Looking back and looking forward. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4(10), 829–839. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1201
Baddeley, A. (2010). Working memory. Current Biology, 20(4), 136–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.12.014
Baddeley, A., Gathercole, S., & Papagno, C. (1998). The phonological loop as a language learning device. Psychological Review, 105(1), 158–173. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.105.1.158
Baddeley, A., Allen, R. J., & Hitch, G. J. (2010). Investigating the episodic buffer. Psychologica Belgica, 50(3–4), 223–243. https://doi.org/10.5334/pb-50-3-4-223
Balzer, W., & Gottner, H. (1983). A theory of literature logically reconstructed * -Reconsideration of the example: Roman Jakobson. Poetics, 12(6), 489–510. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-422x(83)90005-0
Begg, I. (1973). Imagery and integration in the recall of words*. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 27(2), 159–167. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0082465
Begg, I., & Paivio, A. (1969). Concreteness and imagery in sentence meaning. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8(6), 821–827. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(69)80049-6
Behrmann, M., & Avidan, G. (2005). Congenital prosopagnosia: Face-blind from birth. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(4), 180–187. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.TICS.2005.02.011
Bellini-Leite, S. C. (2022). Dual process theory: Embodied and predictive; symbolic and classical. Frontiers in Psychology, 21(13), 805386. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.805386
Bergmann, J., Genç, E., Kohler, A., Singer, W., & Pearson, J. (2016). Smaller primary visual cortex is associated with stronger, but less precise mental imagery. Cerebral Cortex, 26(9), 3838–3850. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhv186
Birgit, K.-H. (2017). An analysis of Alan D. Routledge.
Blazhenkova, O. (2016). Vividness of object and spatial imagery. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 122(2), 490–508. https://doi.org/10.1177/0031512516639431
Carston, R. (2018). Figurative Language, Mental Imagery, and Pragmatics. Metaphor and Symbol, 33(3), 198–217. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2018.1481257
Chomsky, N. (2006). Language and Mind. In Language and Mind. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511791222
Clark, J. M., & Paivio, A. (1987). A dual coding perspective on encoding processes. Imagery and Related Mnemonic Processes. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4676-3_1
Clark, J. M., & Paivio, A. (1991). Dual coding theory and education. In Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027004
Cooper, R. M. (1974). The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language: a new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(74)90005-x
Cowan, N. (2008). What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory? Progress in Brain Research, 169, 323–338. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0079-6123(07)00020-9
Cui, X., Jeter, C. B., Yang, D., Montague, P. R., & Eagleman, D. M. (2007). Vividness of mental imagery: Individual variability can be measured objectively. Vision Research, 47(4), 474–478. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2006.11.013
Darling, S., & Havelka, J. (2010). Visuospatial bootstrapping: Evidence for binding of verbal and spatial information in working memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63(2), 239–245. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470210903348605
Dawes, A. J., Keogh, R., Andrillon, T., & Pearson, J. (2020). A cognitive profile of multi-sensory imagery, memory and dreaming in aphantasia. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65705-7
Eichenbaum, H. (2015). The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map ... of Social Space. In Neuron (Vol. 87, Issue 1, pp. 9–11). Cell Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2015.06.013
Embon-Magal, S., Krasovsky, T., Doron, I., Asraf, K., Haimov, I., Gil, E., & Agmon, M. (2022). The effect of co-dependent (thinking in motion [TIM]) versus single-modality (CogniFit) interventions on cognition and gait among community-dwelling older adults with cognitive impairment: A randomized controlled study. BMC Geriatrics, 22(1), 720. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-022-03403-x
Erdeljac, V., & Sekuliç, M. (2008). Syntactic-semantic relationships in the mental lexicon of aphasic patients. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 22(10–11), 795–803. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699200802130656
Ervas, F., & Tripodi, V. (2012). New perspectives on Quine’s “word and object.” Disputatio, 4(32), 317–322. https://doi.org/10.2478/disp-2012-0001
Fahimi Hnazaee, M., Khachatryan, E., Chehrazad, S., Kotarcic, A., de Letter, M., & van Hulle, M. M. (2020). Overlapping connectivity patterns during semantic processing of abstract and concrete words revealed with multivariate granger causality analysis. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-59473-7
Forsberg, A., Johnson, W., & Logie, R. H. (2020). Cognitive aging and verbal labeling in continuous visual memory. Memory and Cognition, 48(7), 1196–1213. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-020-01043-3
Fox-Muraton, M. (2021). Aphantasia and the language of imagination: A wittgensteinian exploration. Analiza i Egzystencja, 55, 5–24. https://doi.org/10.18276/aie.2021.55-01
Gallese, V., & Lakoff, G. (2005). The brain’s concepts: The role of the sensory-motor system in conceptual knowledge. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 22(3–4), 455–479. https://doi.org/10.1080/02643290442000310
Galliot, E., Levaillant, M., Beard, E., Millot, J. L., & Pourié, G. (2010). Enhancement of spatial learning by predator odor in mice: Involvement of amygdala and hippocampus. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 93(2), 196–202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nlm.2009.09.011
Galton, F. (1880). Statistics of mental imagery. Mind, 19, 301–318. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/os-V.19.301
Galton, F. (1883). Inquiries into human faculty and its development. Dent.
Gathercole, S. E. (2008). Working Memory. Learning and Memory: A Comprehensive Reference, 33–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-012370509-9.00179-0
Gibbs, R. W. (2014). Louder than words: The new science of how the mind makes meaning by Benjamin K Bergen. Language, 90(2), 531–533. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2014.0025
Goldman-Rakic, P. S. (1995). Architecture of the prefrontal cortex and the central executive. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 769(1), 71–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.1995.tb38132.x
Gordon, R., Smith-Spark, J. H., Newton, E. J., & Henry, L. A. (2021). Children’s verbal, visual and spatial processing and storage abilities: An analysis of verbal comprehension, reading, counting and mathematics. Frontiers in Psychology, 3(12), 732182. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.732182
Guarnera, M., Pellerone, M., Commodari, E., Valenti, G. D., & Buccheri, S. L. (2019). Mental images and school learning: A longitudinal study on children. Frontiers in Psychology, 18(10), 471241. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02034
Gudde, H. B., Coventry, K. R., & Engelhardt, P. E. (2016). Language and memory for object location. Cognition, 153, 99–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2016.04.016
Gupta, P., & Tisdale, J. (2009). Does phonological short-term memory causally determine vocabulary learning? Toward a computational resolution of the debate. Journal of Memory and Language, 61(4), 481–502. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2009.08.001
Gurtner, L. M., Hartmann, M., & Mast, F. W. (2021). Eye movements during visual imagery and perception show spatial correspondence but have unique temporal signatures. Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104597
Heidinger, T., & Lehrner, J. (2020). Comparing a visual and verbal semantic memory test on the effects of gender, age and education as assessed in a cognitively healthy sample: A pilot study in the development of the international neuropsychological test profile—a tablet-based cognitive assessment. Neuropsychiatrie, 34(3), 140–147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-020-00355-9
Hovhannisyan, M., Clarke, A., Geib, B. R., Cicchinelli, R., Monge, Z., Worth, T., Szymanski, A., Cabeza, R., & Davis, S. W. (2021). The visual and semantic features that predict object memory: Concept property norms for 1,000 object images. Memory and Cognition, 49(4), 712–731. https://doi.org/10.3758/S13421-020-01130-5
Huettig, F., Rommers, J., & Meyer, A. S. (2011). Using the visual world paradigm to study language processing: A review and critical evaluation. In Acta Psychologica. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2010.11.003
Ionescu, T., & Vasc, D. (2014). Embodied cognition : Challenges for psychology and education. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 128, 275–280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.156
Jackendoff, R. (1987). On beyond Zebra: The relation of linguistic and visual information. Cognition, 26(2), 89–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(87)90026-6
Jackobson, R. (1971). Fundamentals of Language. Mouton.
Jacobs, C., Schwarzkopf, D. S., & Silvanto, J. (2018). Visual working memory performance in aphantasia. Cortex, 105, 61–73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.10.014
Kail, R., & Hall, L. K. (2001). Distinguishing short-term memory from working memory. In Memory & Cognition (Vol. 29, Issue 1).
Katsuki, F., & Constantinidis, C. (2014). Bottom-up and top-down attention: Different processes and overlapping neural systems. In Neuroscientist (Vol. 20, Issue 5, pp. 509–521). SAGE Publications Inc. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073858413514136
Kellogg, R. T., Olive, T., & Piolat, A. (2007). Verbal, visual, and spatial working memory in written language production. Acta Psychologica, 124(3), 382–397. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2006.02.005
Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2011). Mental imagery and visual working memory. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0029221
Keogh, R., & Pearson, J. (2018). The blind mind: No sensory visual imagery in aphantasia. Cortex, 105(2015), 53–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.10.012
Keogh, R., Wicken, M., & Pearson, J. (2021). Visual working memory in aphantasia: Retained accuracy and capacity with a different strategy. Cortex, 143, 237–253. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2021.07.012
Khanna, M. M., & Cortese, M. J. (2021). How well imageability, concreteness, perceptual strength, and action strength predict recognition memory, lexical decision, and reading aloud performance. Memory, 29(5), 622–636. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2021.1924789
Kiefer, M., Pielke, L., & Trumpp, N. M. (2022). Differential temporo-spatial pattern of electrical brain activity during the processing of abstract concepts related to mental states and verbal associations. NeuroImage. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119036
King, M. J., & Macnamara, B. N. (2020). Three visual working memory representations simultaneously control attention. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-67455-y
Korot, A. (2022). Your Mindâ•Žs Eye: Metaphor or Reality? An Exploration of the Varieties of Visual Imagery. Scientific Kenyon.
Kosslyn, S. M., Thompson, W. L., Klm, I. J., & Alpert, N. M. (1995). Topographical representations of mental images in primary visual cortex. Nature, 378, 667–668. https://doi.org/10.1038/378496a0
Kruley, P., Sciama, S. C., & Glenberg, A. M. (1994). On-line processing of textual illustrations in the visuospatial sketchpad: Evidence from dual-task studies. In Memory & Cognition (Vol. 22, Issue 3).
Landau, B., & Stecker, D. S. (1990). Objects and places: Geometric and syntactic representations in early lexical learning. Cognitive Development, 5(3), 287–312. https://doi.org/10.1016/0885-2014(90)90019-P
Logie, R. H., & Pearson, D. G. (1997). The inner eye and the inner scribe of visuo-spatial working memory: Evidence from developmental fractionation. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 9(3), 241–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/713752559
Macintyre, T. E., Moran, A. P., Collet, C., & Guillot, A. (2013). An emerging paradigm: A strength-based approach to exploring mental imagery. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00104
Malhi, S. K., Kost, C., & Buchanan, L. (2021). Does visualisation help or hinder concrete word processing? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(2), 277–294. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820956462
Marre, Q., Huet, N., & Labeye, E. (2021). Embodied mental imagery improves memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(8), 1396–1405. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218211009227
Mast, F. W., Tartaglia, E. M., & Herzog, M. H. (2012). New percepts via mental imagery? Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00360
Mitchison, G. (1996). Visual perception : Where is the mind ’ s eye ? Current Biology, 6(5), 508–510. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0960-9822(02)00528-6
Monzel, M., Keidel, K., & Reuter, M. (2021). Imagine, and you will find – Lack of attentional guidance through visual imagery in aphantasics. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 83, 2486–2497. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-021-02307-z/Published
Morris, N. (1987). Exploring the visuo-spatial scratch pad. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section A, 39(3), 409–430. https://doi.org/10.1080/14640748708401796
Mulder, H., Oudgenoeg-Paz, O., Hellendoorn, A., & Jongmans, M. J. (2017). How Children Learn to Discover Their Environment: An Embodied Dynamic Systems Perspective on the Development of Spatial Cognition. In Neuropsychology of Space: Spatial Functions of the Human Brain (pp. 309–360). Elsevier Inc. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-801638-1.00009-4
Naselaris, T., Olman, C. A., Stansbury, D. E., Ugurbil, K., & Gallant, J. L. (2015). A voxel-wise encoding model for early visual areas decodes mental images of remembered scenes. NeuroImage, 105, 215–228. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.10.018
Paivio, A. (2010). Dual coding theory and the mental lexicon. The Mental Lexicon, 2(5), 205–230. https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.5.2.04pai
Paivio, A. (2014). Intelligence, dual coding theory, and the brain. Intelligence, 47, 141–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2014.09.002
Paivio, A., & Sadoski, M. (2011). Lexicons, contexts, events, and images: Commentary on elman (2009) from the perspective of dual coding theory. Cognitive Science, 35(1), 198–209. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2010.01146.x
Palvio, A. (1974). Pictures and words in visual search. In Memory & Cognition. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03196914
Pearson, J. (2014). New directions in mental-imagery research: The binocular-rivalry technique and decoding fMRI patterns. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(3), 178–183. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414532287
Pearson, J. (2019). The human imagination: The cognitive neuroscience of visual mental imagery. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-019-0202-9
Pearson, J., Naselaris, T., Holmes, E. A., & Kosslyn, S. M. (2015). Mental imagery: Functional mechanisms and clinical applications. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(10), 590–602. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.08.003
Pearson, J., & Kosslyn, S. M. (2015). The heterogeneity of mental representation: Ending the imagery debate. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (Vol. 112, Issue 33, pp. 10089–10092). National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1504933112
Pylyshyn, Z. W. (1973). What the mind’s eye tells the mind’s brain. Psychological Bulletin, 80(1), 1–13.
Raber, D., & Budd, J. M. (2003). Information as sign: Semiotics and information science. Journal of Documentation, 59(5), 507–522. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410310499564
Remington, L. A. (2012). Visual Pathway. Clinical Anatomy and Physiology of the Visual System. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-4377-1926-0.10013-X
Renzi, C., Cattaneo, Z., Vecchi, T., & Cornoldi, C. (2013). Mental imagery and blindness. In Multisensory Imagery (Vol. 9781461458791, pp. 115–130). Springer New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5879-1_7
Rescorla, M. (2009). Cognitive maps and the language of thought. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 60(2), 377–407. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjps/axp012
Richardson, J. T. E. (1978). Mental imagery and the distinction between primary and secondary memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 30(3), 471–485. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335557843000061
Roberts, B. R. T., & Wammes, J. D. (2021). Drawing and memory: Using visual production to alleviate concreteness effects. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 28(1), 259–267. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01804-w
Sassure, F. de, Bally, C., Riedlinger, S., & Sechehaye, A. (1959). Course in general linguistics. The Philosophical Library, Inc.
Schendan, H. E. (2012). Semantic Memory. In Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning (2nd ed., pp. 2187–2191). Elsevier Inc. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-375000-6.00315-3
Schmidt, S. R. (2008). Distinctiveness and memory: A theoretical and empirical review. Learning and Memory: A Comprehensive Reference, 1933, 125–144. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-012370509-9.00143-1
Schwering, S. C., & MacDonald, M. C. (2020). Verbal working memory as emergent from language comprehension and production. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2020.00068
Shipstead, Z., Lindsey, D. R. B., Marshall, R. L., & Engle, R. W. (2014). The mechanisms of working memory capacity: Primary memory, secondary memory, and attention control. Journal of Memory and Language, 72(1), 116–141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2014.01.004
Soylu, B. A., & Yelken, T. Y. (2014). Dual-coding versus context-availability: quantitive and qualitative dimensions of concreteness effect. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 116, 4814–4818. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.1030
Stevens, C. F. (1996). Spatial learning and memory: The beginning of a dream. In Cell (Vol. 87, Issue 7, pp. 1147–1148). Elsevier B.V. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-8674(00)81808-5
Supèr, H. (2003). Working memory in the primary visual cortex. Archives of Neurologye, 60(6), 809–812. https://doi.org/10.1001/archneur.60.6.809
Syed, A. A., Neelofur, S., Moran, A., & O’Reilly, G. (2020). Exploring the vividness of mental imagery and eidetic imagery in people with intellectual disability (ID) in comparison with typically developing (TD) individuals. Heliyon. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.HELIYON.2020.E05429
Tabi, Y. A., Maio, M. R., Attaallah, B., Dickson, S., Drew, D., Idris, M. I., Kienast, A., Klar, V., Nobis, L., Plant, O., Saleh, Y., Sandhu, T. R., Slavkova, E., Toniolo, S., Zokaei, N., Manohar, S. G., & Husain, M. (2022). Vividness of visual imagery questionnaire scores and their relationship to visual short-term memory performance. Cortex, 146, 186–199. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2021.10.011
Talamini, F., Blain, S., Ginzburg, J., Houix, O., Bouchet, P., Grassi, M., Tillmann, B., & Caclin, A. (2022). Auditory and visual short-term memory: Influence of material type, contour, and musical expertise. Psychological Research Psychologische Forschung, 86(2), 421–442. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01519-0
Tartaglia, E. M., Bamert, L., Mast, F. W., & Herzog, M. H. (2009). Human perceptual learning by mental imagery. Current Biology, 19(24), 2081–2085. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.10.060
Tian, X., & Poeppel, D. (2012). Mental imagery of speech: Linking motor and perceptual systems through internal simulation and estimation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00314
Tong, F. (2013). Imagery and visual working memory : One and the same ? Thought-based interaction with the physical world. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(10), 489–490. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2013.08.005
van Ede, F. (2020). Visual working memory and action: Functional links and bi-directional influences. Visual Cognition, 28(5–8), 401–413. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2020.1759744
Vorhees, C. V., & Williams, M. T. (2014). Assessing spatial learning and memory in rodents. ILAR Journal, 55(2), 310–332. https://doi.org/10.1093/ilar/ilu013
Ward, J., Brown, P., Sherwood, J., & Simner, J. (2018). An autistic-like profile of attention and perception in synaesthesia. Cortex, 107, 121–130. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CORTEX.2017.10.008
Warner, J. (2007). Analogies between linguistics and information theory. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(3), 309–321. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20490
Watkins, N. W. (2018). (A)phantasia and severely deficient autobiographical memory: Scientific and personal perspectives. Cortex. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.10.010
Watt, W. C., & Chomsky, N. (1970). Aspects of the theory of syntax. College Composition and Communication, 21(1), 75. https://doi.org/10.2307/354598
Wilson, J. J., Harding, E., Fortier, M., James, B., Donnett, M., Kerslake, A., O’Leary, A., Zhang, N., & Jeffery, K. (2015). Spatial learning by mice in three dimensions. Behavioural Brain Research, 289, 125–132. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2015.04.035
Zdrazilova, L., & Pexman, P. M. (2013). Grasping the invisible: Semantic processing of abstract words. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 20(6), 1312–1318. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-013-0452-x
Zeman, A., Milton, F., Della Sala, S., Dewar, M., Frayling, T., Gaddum, J., Hattersley, A., Heuerman-Williamson, B., Jones, K., MacKisack, M., & Winlove, C. (2020). Phantasia–The psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes. Cortex, 1(130), 426–440. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2020.04.003
Zhan, L., Zhou, P., & Crain, S. (2018). Using the visual-world paradigm to explore the meaning of conditionals in natural language. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 33(8), 1049–1062. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2018.1448935
Acknowledgements
Not applicable.
Funding
Not applicable.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Both authors have equally contributed to drafting and revising the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.
Ethical Approval
Not applicable.
Consent to Participate
Not applicable.
Consent for Publication
Not applicable.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Savarimuthu, A., Ponniah, R.J. The Mind’s Eye is Not a Metaphor: Visuospatial Working Memory and Mental Imageries for Learning and Language Comprehension. Psychol Stud 69, 158–168 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-024-00789-z
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12646-024-00789-z