Abstract
Are a beagle’s ears bigger than a bulldog’s? Which of Mona Lisa’s hands is crossed over the other? We might answer such questions by engaging in visual imagery, using a mental representation that is similar to the visual representation that is activated when we really see a physical dog or a painting. Such quasi-perceptual visual experiences are often described as “seeing with the mind’s eye.” While such mental representations are being maintained, they can be inspected in order to determine that the beagle’s ears are bigger and Mona Lisa’s right hand is crossed over the left. But imagery is not restricted to vision: deciding whether the Moonlight Sonata would sound better if Brendel played it a little faster or whether a pear tastes sweeter than a peach appeals to imagery in other senses.
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Lacey, S., Lawson, R. (2013). Introduction. In: Lacey, S., Lawson, R. (eds) Multisensory Imagery. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5879-1_1
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