Painter and scribe: From model of mind to cognitive strategy. (August 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: MacKisack, Matthew
• Is Part Of: Cortex. Volume 105(2018)
• Page Start: 118
• Page End: 124
• Publication Date: 2018-08
• Subjects: Mental representation -- Intellectual history -- Imagery -- Language; Neuropsychology -- Periodicals; Nervous system -- Periodicals; Neurology -- Periodicals; Psychophysiology -- Periodicals; Behavior -- Periodicals; Neurology -- Periodicals; 612.825
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2017.11.018
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0010-9452

Abstract

Abstract: Since antiquity the mind has been conceived to operate via images and words. Pre-scientific thinkers (and some scientific) who presented the mind as operating in such a way tended to i) bias one representational mode over the other, and ii) claim the dominance of the mode to be the case universally. The rise of empirical psychological science in the late 19th-century rehearses the word/image division of thought but makes universal statements – e.g., that recollection is a verbal process for everyone – untenable. Since then, the investigation of individual differences and case studies of imagery loss have shown rather that words and images present alternative cognitive "strategies" that individuals will be predisposed to employing – but which, should the necessity arise, can be relearned using the other representational mode. The following sketches out this historical shift in understanding, and concludes by inviting consideration of the wider context in which discussion of the relationships between 'images' and 'words' (as both internal and external forms of representation) must take place.