In Defense of Traditional Psychology

Richardson: In Defense of the Imagism of Traditional Psychology

Introduction

Alan Richardson's Mental Imagery (1969) was hailed at the time of its publication as one of the important new works that would bring the study of mental imagery back into psychology. Ironically, within a few short years, Richardson's work was viewed as retrograde by cognitive psychologists. The fundamental reasons for this were both philosophical and methodological. The philosophic difference is in the definition of mental images. Richardson insists that mental images are distinctively conscious entities. He argues nothing is gained in terms of understanding the function of images in consciousness if we assume that they can have effects while remaining unconscious. This is simply to invent an explanation for events that events happen in consciousness for which we in fact have no explanation. This sentiment derives directly from traditional psychology. Wundt, one of the founders of empirical psychology, gave similar reasons for rejecting the concept of unconscious ideas. In these traditionally-based conceptions of psychology, the concept of unconscious ideas is essentially an oxymoron.

The Importance of Types

Richardson's methodological approach was not driven by pre- conceived models or theories. His view was that the psychological study of imagery should involve an attempt to catalog mental imagery by types, determined by a combination of subjective and objective conditions associated with each type. His research explicitly includes subjective reports as data. Richardson suggested a division of imagery into four basic types: after-images, eidetic images, memory images, and imagination images. (This division, and Richardson's method, inspired the Chart of Types supplied on these pages.) Subjectively, the types differ in degree of vividness and degree of autonomy, or independence from control by the subject. Objectively, they differ in the preceding and antecedent conditions of their occurrence. One of the principle tasks of psychology, in Richardson's view, is to find correlations between measurements for various types of imagery and other psychological variables. The degree of vividness of various imagery types, for instance, could be correlated with efficiency in memory tasks, sports performance, effecatiousness of psychotherapeutic exercises, problem solving abilities, and numerous other variables of interest.

The philosophic interest in classification is that it provides a basis for phenomenological description and philosophic distinctions using an agreed-upon terminology. Classification serves to identify the topic of philosophic inquiry. This exercise shifts the focus of our inquiry into the nature of imagery away from models of explanation based on unknown mechanisms and toward description of the phenomena.

The Role of Mental Imagery and the Betts QMI Scale

Richardson completed his study before the huge rush of cognitive scientists to "explain" how imagery is involved in various tasks. From his review of what was known about imagery at the time, Richardson concluded that we simply do not know what part imagery plays in determining our behavior and other psychological processes, but that it played some part he thought was nearly certain.

Richardson suggested that the principal problem in determining the role of imagery was the problem of measuring imagery. His understanding of measurement for psychological entities is entirely different from Kosslyn's. Richardson accepted the reports of imagery given by subjects at their face value. The problem of measuring imagery is primarily one making sure subjects understand what they are being asked to report. Interview techniques and questionnaires about imagery have been used in psychology at least since Galton (1883) to establish meaningful scales of imagery vividness and imagery control. (Richardson, 1969, p. 91-92, 148-156). The Betts QMI scale of imagery vividness, which was used in many studies, is an excellent example how subjective responses are used to define the nature of imagery as it was understood by the tradition of psychology addressed by Richardson. Subjects are asked to rate their subjective experience of imagining a friend, or a sunset, or of running upstairs, or (aural image) hearing the whistle of a locomotive against the following scale:

: 1. Perfectly clear and as vivid as the actual experience.
2. Very clear and comparable in vividness to the actual experience.
3. Moderately clear and vivid.
4. Not clear or vivid, but recognizable.
5. Vague and dim.
6. So vague and dim as to be hardly discernible.
7. No image present at all, you only 'knowing' that you are thinking of the object.

Unlike the computational view, in which images are conceived of as either operating or not, this scale implies that the operating modes of imagery are continuous rather than discrete. Thus, although imagery can be measured, after a fashion, according to traditional psychology, a set of absolutely and objectively quantifyable attributes of imagery is an unlikely prospect. Another reason Richardson had for skepticism about turning the study of imagery into a precise science, is that, as traditionalists since James have pointed out, there may not be a universal form of human cognition. Evidently, there are habitual visualizers and habitual verbalizers, people who encode their experience in terms of images and those who encode their experiences in terms of words. An attempt, therefore, to discover the workings of the human mind, abstractly conceived as being fundamentally universal in its structure and operation may be entirely misguided.