Verbal vs. visual coding in modified mental imagery map exploration task

pictorial landmarks contained less familiar abstract textures from the paintings of the eminent abstract painters. Procedure: The experimental procedure was the same as in the first experiment. Data analysis: Four subjects with reaction time beyond 3 standard deviations (in any of the experimental situations) were excluded from the analyses. All participants completed control task. The data were analysed using repeated measure analysis of variance with 3 factors (distance, modality and concreteness). First factor, distance, had four levels (distance between 2, 3, 4 or 5 landmarks), factor modality had two levels (verbal or pictorial), and concreteness also had two levels (abstract or concrete). Results and discussion SDE was again obtained on all of the maps used in the second experiment (F(3, 22)=67.169, p=.000) (Figure 4). The effect of modality, observed in the first experiment, was replicated only on the concrete level (F(1,22)=13,99; p=0.001) (could be also observed on Figure 4). Consequently, interaction between the two factors, modality and concreteness, was also significant (F(1,22)=9,05; p=0.006) (figure 5). In this experiment we observe a positive bias for pictorial representation only on concrete level (F(1,22)=64,68; p=0.000). Interestingly enough, abstract pictorial representation behaved in a very much the same manner as verbal VERBAL VS. VISUAL CODING IN MENTAL IMAGERY MAP EXPLORATION TASK 48 material. Another somewhat unexpected finding was the lack of influence of concreteness on verbal maps. Figure 4. Averaged reaction times of mental exploration of the maps with landmarks of different modality and concreteness Figure 5. Interaction between the modality and concreteness. No single code model could account for the obtained results (figure 5), as it would be impossible to explain the shorter reaction times for concrete Ivana Ćirović and Sunčica Zdravković 49 pictures (and none of the other three types of materials) in a single code modality. Therefore the explanation must be found in the models, such as Paivio’s, proposing two separate modalities. However within original theory (Paivio, 1986) certain equality was drown between concrete and pictorial on one side and abstract and propositional on the other. Our results do not support this categorization. Modality and concreteness appear to be separate factors. Abstract pictorial material was probably the most advanced step away from the classical experimental paradigms. Even in the everyday communication mentioning something analog (i.e. picture-like) but abstract is an oxymoron. Keeping all this in mind we wanted to insure that our results were not a consequence of a particular random quality of the chosen stimuli. Therefore, in a separate experiment, we asked another 8 participants to perform the same task but viewing other three types of abstract materials (figure 6). Again we obtained the same results as in Experiment 2. Figure 6. Three additional types of abstract pictorial stimuli: fractals, Chinese letters and snowflakes. The fact that abstract pictorial material had a different treatment from the concrete pictorial material does not necessarily contradicts model such as Paivio’s. The longer scanning time might as well be a consequence of a single memory trace. Only in this case it is not a verbal material without a pictorial trace but a pictorial material without a verbal trace. However, the finding that there was no positive bias for concrete words is a problem for the theory postulating two different types of mental traces, which would enhance retrieval. We could conclude that maybe mental scanning, an inherently visual task, is at odds with any kind of verbal representations and the landmarks with concrete words did not produce the expected effect.