When research participants engage in tasks that require the construction of this type of mental representation, they utilize parts of the occipital lobes: ?

Yes, researchers do engage the participant’s occipital lobe, when they engage in tasks that do require "construction of "mental image" representations".

Explanation:

This is because, the "occipital lobe" is the visual centre of our brain. The "optic nerve" from eye goes there after forming the optic chiasma where the impulses are decoded, and searched for some previous relatable data linked with the image called visual spatial system. This is actually required by the scientists when they are involved in this type of researches.

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