For the last thirty years, I've been obsessed with a question: What shape are a German shepherd's ears? (    41    ), I'm not really interested　in that question specifically; (    42    ). What I'm really interested in is how people answer the question from memory. Most people report that they visualize the dog's head and mentally “look at” its ears. But what does it mean to visualize something? What does it mean to “look at” something in your mind? (43)There’s no little person in your mind actually looking at a picture. lf there were, there would have to be a little person inside that person’s head, and so on and so on, and that doesn’t make any sense.

For many years, we tried to collect objective evidence showing that when you have the experience of visualizing there's actually something pictorial in your head. There are parts of the brain that are physically organized so that when you look at something, a corresponding pattern is physically (    44    ) the cortex. Even if your eyes are closed when you visualize the first visual area in the processing stream is often activated during visual imagery; moreover, the way it's activated depends on what you're visualizing. If you visualized something vertical, there is activation along the so-called vertical meridian; if you visualize something horizontal the activation flips over on its side. (45)Similarly, visualizing objects of different sizes changes the pattern of activation in ways very much like what occurs if you look at objects of the corresponding sizes.

But I've been working on answering this question - not about the dog but about the question behind that question, what imagery is -for some thirty years now, and I want to move on (    46    ) just trying to establish that there are actual mental images and that these are bona fide representations that have a functional role in processing systems, I want to ask, “So what? Who cares?” Lately I've been working on something I've tentatively called (47)the Reality Simulation Principle. It's built on my lab's findings that most - about two-thirds - of the same parts of the brain are involved both in visual mental imagery and in visual perception. That's a huge amount of overlap, which leads us to suspect that the mental image of an object can have the same impact on the mind and body that seeing the actual object would have. My notion is that once the brain systems are engaged, they don't know (so to speak) where the (48)impetus came from; they can produce the same effects whether you activated the process endogenously(from information in memory) or exogenously (from looking at something).

The Reality Simulation Principle describes how to use mental images as stand-ins for actual objects －basically, how to manipulate yourself It's useful to understand the principle in conjunction with what I call the Gm cycle, which stands for Generate, Inspect, Transform, Inspect. If mental images can simulate actual objects and scenes, you can generate the image, inspect what you've got, transform it, and inspect the result. This can be done iteratively, meaning that you can take advantage of the Reality Simulation Principle to do all sorts of good things for yourself.

What kind of good things am I talking about? Memory is one obvious example. From the work of the cognitive psychologist Alan Paivio and countless others we know that you're able to remember objects better than pictures of objects, and pictures of objects better than words. It also tums out that if you visualize the objects named by words, you do better in memory tests than you would otherwise. Consequently, we're now interested in topics such as hypnosis. We can hypnotize you and have you visualize an object and imagine that it's actually a three-dimensional object appearing in glorious vivid detail. In this case, we expect that your memory will be boosted even further.

• 問1 空所(41)に入れるのに最も適切なものを、(あ)～(え)の中から一つ選び、その記号をマークしなさい。
  • (あ) To my surprise
  • (い) Above all
  • (う) In the end
  • (え) Of course
• 問2 空所(42)に入れるのに最も適切なものを、(あ)～(え)の中から一つ選び、その記号をマークしなさい。
  • (あ) generally, I have been
  • (い) truth aside, my interest is in another question
  • (う) if I were, I could just go out and look at dogs
  • (え) I am extremely interested in it broadly
• 問3 下線部(43)の意味に合う最も適切なものを、(あ)～(え)の中から一つ選び、その記号をマークしなさい。
  • (あ) Suggesting a hypothesis that includes the same hypothesis in it is unpersuasive.
  • (い) Confirming a new hypothesis is overcoming counter-examples again and again.
  • (う) People with multi-personalities look as if they behave inconsistently.
  • (え) To get a meaningful result, you shouldn't believe what the other part of you says.
• 問4 空所(44)に入れるのに最も適切なものを、(あ)～(え)の中から一つ選び、その記号をマークしなさい。
  • (あ) layering in
  • (い) lying about
  • (う) laid out on
  • (え) lain out in
• 問5 下線部(45)の意味に最も近いものを、(あ)～(え)の中から一つ選び、その記号をマークしなさい。
  • (あ) Also, visualizing objects and their corresponding sizes requires a perceived activation.
  • (い) In a similar manner, as much is still unknown about seeing objects in different sizes, visualizing them results in changes in the activation.
  • (う) Likewise, both visualizing and imagining objects achieve the same degree of activation regardless of their size.
  • (え) By the same token, visualizing varying sizes of objects and perceiving the corresponding sizes cause almost the same activation.
• 問6 空所(46)に入れるのに最も適切なものを、(あ)～(え)の中から一つ選び、その記号をマークしなさい。
  • (あ) Instead of
  • (い) Regardless
  • (う) Because of
  • (え) Thinking
• 問7 下線部(47)の説明として最も適切なものを、 (あ)～(え)の中から一つ選び、その記号をマークしなさい。
  • (あ) The principle is built on the fact that almost 30 percent of the brain is used both in visualizing and perceiving objects.
  • (い) It is an assumption that visualizing and perceiving are treated as almost the same in the brain system.
  • (う) It is a hypothesis that argues against the idea that imagery and real perception do not differ in the brain.
  • (え) It is a fundamental law that the brain observes at the stage where it distinguishes visualizing from perceiving.
• 問8 下線部(48)の意味に最も近いものを、(あ)～(え)の中から一つ選び、その記号をマークしなさい。
  • (あ) hindrance
  • (い) stimulus
  • (う) delusion
  • (え) informant
• 問9 本文の内容と合致しないものを、(あ)～(え)の中から一つ選び、その記号をマークしなさい。この設問は(49)にマークすること。
  • (あ) The writer has recently moved on to research related to visual mental imagery and visual perception.
  • (い) In the writer's theoretical framework, mental processing is possible regardless of the information source.
  • (う) The so-called GITI cycle is an indispensable prerequisite for establishing the Reality Simulation Principle.
  • (え) There is some correspondence between perception and mental processing.
• 問10 本文の内容に合致するものを、(あ)～(え)の中から一つ選び、その記号をマークしなさい。この設問は(50)にマークすること。
  • (あ) Hypnosis may aid in the production of vivid mental images, which may lead to enhanced memory.
  • (い) What shape are a German shepherd's ears? is a very good question to any young cognitive psychologist who is looking for his or her research topic.
  • (う) Good memory is to remember words better than pictures of objects.
  • (え) The Reality Simulation Principle will boost a person's memory because visualizing objects is much easier than perceiving them in the real world.