By Christion Beamon
Imagery is defined simply by the APA Dictionary of Psychology as “cognitive generation of sensory input from the five senses, individually or collectively, which is recalled from experience or self-generated in a non experienced form”. Imagery is also associated with the ability to form mental images about certain things you think about. This is something that occurs with people everyday. You create mental images of different thoughts every single day. The most relatable thing I could compare it to is when you go a certain amount of time without eating and you have that one craving in your mind. You can see it and almost perfectly imagine what it will taste like once you can eat it.
Imagery is also very helpful within school. Thinking about a test that you had studied all night for. One you are taking that test then you could almost perfectly visualize in your head about what all was on that study guide. Imagery is actually such an essential skill in the way our cognitive process works it is widely studied. “Several studies have investigated the link between mental imagery processes and the specific abilities involved in academic learning among preschoolers. Moreover, many researches showed the effect of preschool children’s abilities on the formal learning of reading, writing and math both early schooling and in the following school grades”(frontiersin.org). But although it is important, it can be affected by many different things. Things like dyslexia can often mess with the way we can form mental images. For example a paragraph on fronteirsin.org states “the difficulties which people with dyslexia could be related to problems in the integration process of the segments which compose letters in a mental image”. It is an important part of how we process information and recollect it.
Imagery is used in many different parts of psychology. It is a main idea to actually help people psychologically. Mental images can be created by us to calm ourselves down or to help reconnect with ourselves in a way. “Guided imagery is a relaxation technique that relies on descriptive language to facilitate listener visualization of detailed, calming images, with the goal of achieving a relaxation response” (NASW). This statement helps explain some of the ways we use our minds to calm down. When we get overly worked up or over stressed then naturally we could create peaceful mental images to help calm ourselves down and become more level headed. This type of use of imagery can be applied in settings like school, social workers offices, and even in social worker meetings to prisoners.
Now imagery isn’t just something that we have to create within our minds. There are many things that will make us create mental images. Music is a very good source of relaxation that gives us positive mental images.In a study, done including music, imagery,m and stress levels results came out to report that “The participants who used guided imagery during breaks over the four-week period achieved significant reductions in anxiety and significant increases in sleep quality when compared to the control group. The researchers detail the specific data of the study in the article and note the study’s limitations. Still, they believe this indicates a possible area of assistance for mental health professionals, including social workers, in combating compassion fatigue” (NASW). Our own emotional states and moods can be controlled in the slightest bit by these images. Inspiration for imagery is all around us. You see it used and mentioned a lot with artists. A simple mental image can start the projection of an entire portrait being painted onto a canvas.
Imagery has not always been the easiest topic to understand. “Historically, mental imagery research suffered for both practical and theoretical reasons. Methodological constraints caused by imagery’s inherently private nature put practical limits on the types of mechanistic investigation that could be performed” (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). In the late 20th century, there was a rise of correlation between visual attention and visual working memory that researchers had noticed. This is when imagery kind of became a little more clear cut with how it works and how we use it. Imagery was recognised as a tool we use in our minds to recognise our thoughts to how we perceive them. In a simpler manner, people could think of imagery to be used as a way to make our thoughts have more of an identity with mental images.
In a different article on frontiersin.org, there is an explanation of mental images that is more in depth. “Within this construct, motor imagery (MI) is a dynamic mental state during which the representation of a given motor movement is rehearsed in working memory without overt motor output” (Decety, 1996). This is basically explaining how mental images are representation for certain stimuli that we experience and think about.
In conclusion, imagery is a very important tool that we use. We use it everyday and we use it for many different things. Imagery is simply a way that we can take thoughts and experiences and make mental images out of them. We can form mental images through the means of music, art, personal thoughts, and many other things around us. It is largely associated with cognitive psychology with it being such an important cognitive process but it is also used in other forms of psychology as well.
Works Cited
Guarnera, M. (2019). Mental Images and School Learning: A Longitudinal Study on Children.
Frontiers. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02034/full
Kaminske, A. N. (2021, November 25). Thank You to Our 2021 Community! The Learning
Scientists. https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2021/11/25-1
Moran, A. (2020). Motor Imagery Practice and Cognitive Processes. Frontiers.
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
Staff, N. (2016). The Effectiveness of Guided Imagery in Treating Compassion Fatigue and Anxiety of Mental Health Workers. Socialworkblog.Org. http://www.socialworkblog.org/nasw-publications/2018/03/the-effectiveness-of-guided-imagery-in-treating-compassion-fatigue-and-anxiety-of-mental-health-workers/