The study of mental imagery has been a central concern of modern psychology, but most of what we know concerns visual imagery. A number of researchers, however, have recently begun to explore auditory imagery; this foundation-level volume presents their work. The topics covered are diverse, a reflection of the fact that auditory imagery seems relevant to numerous research domains -- from the ordinary memory rehearsal of undergraduates to the delusional voices of schizophrenics, from music imagery to imagery for speech. The chapters also address the parallels (and contrasts) between visual and auditory imagery, the relations between "inner speech" and overt speech, and between the "inner ear" and actual hearing. This book provides a valuable resource for students in many areas: imagery, working memory, music, speech, auditory perception, schizophrenia, or deafness.
Biography
Reisberg, Daniel
"Auditory imagery is an important part of mental life, and a good understanding of it would have important consequences for our general views of mental representation. But through a quirk of history, auditory imagery has remained invisible (or should I say inaudible) in the cognitive psychology catalogue, while visual imagery has inspired ingenious experimental research and provocative theoretical controversies. The appearance of this volume is an important event in the history of psychology. By gathering research efforts previously scattered in areas like 'short term memory,' 'inner speech,' and 'musical cognition' and defining them all as studies of auditory imagery, Dan Reisberg has created a brand new area of research and theory. The excellent individual contributions in this collection comprise a superb inauguration to this new field, and should be of interest to a wide variety of cognitive scientists and general readers."
—Steven Pinker
Massachusetts Institute of Technology"This book fills what had been a glaring hole in the literature. Perhaps because humans are so visual, mental imagery has been studied primarily in the visual modality. But we are also linguistic creatures, and the perceptual abilities that subserve language are well developed in our species. And we are musical creatures. Thus, it is no surprise that we have rich auditory and musical imagery, and the chapters in this book go a long way toward illuminating these abilities. Students of both imagery and perception would profit from reading this book."
—Stephen Kosslyn
Harvard University
