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The philosophical arguments about whether and under what conditions scientific research is, or should be, value-free have polarized academic disciplines for decades. In this project, I hope to make a contribution to easing this tension by, first, reviewing feminist critiques of scientific research with respect to the roles of politics and values. Further, as an example of how such critiques need not fundamentally undermine what is colloquially understood as scientific research, I apply insights from these critiques to empirically study scientific explanations within a sub field within Psychology: gender differences in spatial reasoning. Finally, I use the results of this analysis as an example and starting point for developing a conceptual framework for ethically incorporating the role of values into scientific research by specifying and justifying judgments that are made throughout the research process.

Research on mental imagery has generally neglected to examine temporal aspects of mental images. In this study, an image-scanning methodology using a virtual environment is adopted to begin to examine these temporal properties. Two versions of a virtual environment presented different groups of participants with either a positive or a negative relationship between travel distance and time. Participants subsequently reproduced both of these time-distance relationships within their mental images. Analyses suggested that participants' spatial representations were unaffected by this manipulation, but that participants' temporal representations were less accurate in the negative time-distance relationship condition. Finally, a psychophysical function was fit to assess the relationship between objective and imaged time, and was found to be significantly different than that generally found in time perception research. Previous research in spatiotemporal cognition is used to aid interpretation of these findings, and to suggest avenues for future research on mental imagery and spatiotemporal cognition.