Design of an Architecture for Reasoning with Mental Images

Visual mental images can be conceived of as mental models (in their Johnson-Lairdian sense, 1983) which involve both spatial and visual information (Kosslyn, 1980; 1994; Finke, 1989). Mental images are working memory constructions which are closely related to visual perception. The term is used to designate either imagery phenomena in the presence of actual visual perception, or those that are evoked solely on the basis of knowledge retrieved from long-term memory. Visual mental imagery and visual perception seem to rely on the same cognitive mechanisms to some extent; see the contribution of Mast (this workshop) for an overview of how both phenomena are related.