Apperception and imagery in blindfold chess.

Apperception constructs functional and "meaningful" mental representations. These representations are often built on mental images. Hence it is rational to assume that the contents of some parts of images may be functionally more important than others. This means that the cognitive processing of some parts of the image is more effective than for others. To extract this preferential structure, which we call the functional figure in mental images, five experiments were conducted on blindfold chess imagery. We showed that blindfold chess players have much better recall of functionally significant than of functionally insignificant areas of chess positions. Thus, of the various mental representations of chess board areas, the functionally more significant areas are better represented than others.

Aspects of skilled imagery in blindfold chess.

Blindfold chess is a very good task environment to study skill-based mental images or skilled imagery. Seven experiments providing information on different aspects of skilled imagery in blindfold chess were made. In all experiments very clear skill-related differences in the operation of chess-specific materials could be found. It will also be argued that chess-specific patterns or chunks are important in skilled subjects' construction of images and the operation of these images relies on the cooperation of visual working memory and long-term memory.