Visual imagery can impede reasoning

Although it is natural to suppose that visual mental imagery is important in human deductive reason-ing, the evidence is equivocal. This article argues that reasoning studies have not distinguished between ease of vis ualization and ease of constructing spatial models. Rating studies show that these factors can be separated. Their results yielded four sorts of relations: 1. visuo-spatial relations that are easy to en-visage visually and spatially; 2. visual relations that are easy to envisage visually but hard to envisage spatially; 3. spatial relations that are hard to envisage visually but easy to envisage spatially; and 4. con-trol relations that are hard to envisage both visually and spatially. Three experiments showed that visual relations slow down the process of reasoning in comparison with control relations, whereas visuo-spatial and spatial relations yield inferences comparable to those of control relations. We conclude that irrelevant visual detail can be a nuisance in reasoning and impedes the process. “I am by the sea and I have a picture. This is a picture of a picture. I am – ” She screwed up her face and scowled – “thinking. ”... She paused, frustrated by the vivid detail of her picture, not knowing how to extract from it the significance she felt was there