What Is Mental Imagery?

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Mental Imagery involves visualizing events or objects without the physical representation of them present. It is a mental process of retrieving or creating information. Not all mental images are of actual events or objects some maybe imaginary. Mental images can occur voluntarily or involuntarily. Voluntary images involve active, conscious think about an object, person or event which then pulls these memories to the front of a person’s mind or thought, essentially becoming the target of that person’s focus. Involuntary images also known as intrusive images, involves the spontaneous appearance of images in a person’s mind, ‘Intrusive Images are instances of involuntary or direct… retrieval in that their appearance in consciousness is spontaneous …show more content…
Important themes of mental images include content (negative or positive), vividness and the prospective of the image (field vs. observer). Intrusive images in particular can often be described in great detail, in terms of ‘clarity, color, shading, shapes, movement, foreground and background characteristics, and other spatial relationships’ (Brewin, 2010). Studies show that the vividness of mental imagery can produces strong emotion, if the image is negative there will be a strong negative emotion that accompanies the image. The emotions exercised are reportedly stronger than the emotions produced by verbal stimuli (Weblau, C. Steil, R. 2014). There are a number of similarities in mental imagery across disorders and there are specific differences as …show more content…
Studies show the amount of intrusive images in individuals with depression were two times higher than in healthy individuals (Weblau, C. Steil, R. 2014). Researchers have noted that the lack of positive mental imagery can be just as important as the presence of negative mental imagery. In Depressed individuals there is a reported decrease in vividness of mental imagery, for example a health person might want to be successful and imagine a particular job and more detailed associated with this though, a depressed person might think about the future and can only think of success and no specific details. The ability to create positive future images is a factor of optimism and a general predictor of lower levels of depression (Weblau, C. Steil, R. 2014). As mentioned before emotional response to images has become an area of interest and “A connection was found between emotional reactions such as sadness, fear, helplessness, and numbness following intrusive images and the level of depressive symptoms,… currently depressed patients experience significantly more sadness and helplessness associated with imagery than recovered depressed individuals” (Weblau, C. Steil, R. 2014). Imagery’s emotional effect on depression can be a factor in the maintenance and persistence of depression in individuals. There is current research investigating the therapeutic value of mental
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