Mental rotation and temporal contingencies.

A task that requires subjects to determine whether two forms of the same shape, but in different orientations, are mirror images or identical except for orientation is called a handedness recognition task. Subjects' reaction times (RT) on this task are consistently related to the angular disparity (termed alpha) between the two presented forms. This pattern of data has been interpreted to indicate that subjects solve the task by imagining that one of the forms rotates into the orientation of the other (termed mental rotation). The speed with which one imagines one of the forms rotating has been widely considered a fixed capability of the individual, and thus immune to the effect of contingencies. We present an experiment that assesses the effects of temporal contingencies in a handedness recognition task on the slope of the function RT = f(alpha). The data indicate that the slope of this function can come under the control of temporal contingencies.     

Mental rotation is not easily cognitively penetrable

When participants take part in mental imagery experiments, are they using their “tacit knowledge” of perception to mimic what they believe should occur in the corresponding perceptual task? Two experiments were conducted to examine whether such an account can be applied to mental imagery in general. These experiments both examined tasks that required participants to “mentally rotate” stimuli. In Experiment 1, instructions led participants to believe that they could reorient shapes in one step or avoid reorienting the shapes altogether. Regardless of instruction type, response times increased linearly with increasing rotation angles. In Experiment 2, participants first observed novel objects rotating at different speeds, and then performed a mental rotation task with those objects. The speed of perceptually demonstrated rotation did not affect the speed of mental rotation. We argue that tacit knowledge cannot explain mental imagery results in general, and that in particular the mental rotation effect reflects the nature of the underlying internal representation and processes that transform it, rather than participants’ pre-existing knowledge.     

Mental rotation of static and dynamic figures

Previous studies comparing performance on standard (i.e., static) and dynamic spatial test items have concluded that the two item types measure different abilities. Such conclusions about the uniqueness of static and dynamic spatial abilities seem premature, however, since only a limited number of dynamic spatial tasks have been utilized in research and these have differed markedly from their static counterparts. In the present studies, tasks were designed to require a common mental operation (mental rotation) under static and dynamic conditions. Correlations between static and dynamic performance ranged from .80 to .90. This appears to suggest that the emergence of a unique dynamic ability factor depends on the utilization of certain specialized tasks (e.g., arrival time tasks) with mental operations much different than those required by conventional spatial tests. In other words, it is apparently the requirement for different cognitive processes and not the processing of stimulus motion per se that distinguishes performance onsome dynamic tasks from performance on some standard static tasks.     

Mental rotation of letters,pictures, and three-dimensional objects in German dyslexic children

This study examines mental rotation ability in children with developmental dyslexia. Prior investigations have yielded equivocal results that might be due to differences in stimulus material and testing formats employed. Whereas some investigators found dyslexic readers to be impaired in mental rotation, others did not report any performance differences or even superior spatial performance for dyslexia. Here, we report a comparison of mental rotation for letters, three-dimensional figures sensu Shepard and Metzler, and colored pictures of animals or humans in second-grade German dyslexic readers. Findings indicate that dyslexic readers are impaired in mental rotation for all three kinds of stimuli. Effects of general intelligence were controlled. Furthermore, dyslexic children were deficient in other spatial abilities like identifying letters or forms among distracters. These results are discussed with respect to the hypotheses of a developmental dysfunction of the parietal cortex or a subtle anomaly in cerebellar function in dyslexic readers.     

Mental rotation of random two-dimensional shapes

Two experiments are reported in which Ss were required to determine whether a random, angular form, presented at any of a number of picture-plane orientations, was a “standard” or “reflected” version. Average time required to make this determination increased linearly with the angular departure of the form from a previously learned orientation. The slope and intercept of the reaction-time (RT) function were virtually constant, regardless of the perceptual complexity of the test form and the orientation selected for initial learning.When Ss were informed in advance as to the identity and the orientation of the upcoming test form and, further, were permitted to indicate when they were prepared for its external presentation, RT for determining the version of the form was constant for all test-form orientations. However, the time needed to prepare for the test-form presentation increased linearly with the angular departure of the form from the learned orientation.It is argued that the processes both of preparing for and of responding to a disoriented test form consist of the mental rotation of an image, and that both sorts of mental rotation (pre-stimulus and post-stimulus) are carried out at essentially the same constant rate.     

Mental rotation performance and the effect of gender in fourth graders and adults

The DSM-IV implicitly assumes that development is uniform across ability domains, which implies that relationships between ability measures do not differ across development. We assessed whether correlations between measures of nine ability constructs differed across samples of children aged 3 – 5 (n = 117), 6 – 8 (n = 116), 9 – 11 (n = 124) and 12 – 14 years (n = 92). LISREL analyses show that correlations in each age group differ from those of each other age group. Parallel analyses indicate that the latent structure of ability differs across age groups. We conclude that shared maturational processes, including changes in the connectivity of neural systems, are responsible for decreasingly and increasingly strong relationships between some ability measures.     

自我和物体为参照系的心理旋转分离：内旋效应

采用虚拟的旋转不同角度左、右手模型,构建“左右手判断(Left and right hand judgment: LR)”任务和“相同－不同判断(same and different judgment: SD)”任务,考察这两种实验任务是否都存在内旋效应和角度效应,以此推论被试采用何种旋转策略。结果发现：（1） 两种实验任务结果均表现出显著的角度效应。（2）在LR任务条件下,存在显著的内旋效应,而在SD任务中不存在内旋效应。从而表明当人手图片作为心理旋转材料时,它具有双重角色。被试心理旋转加工时究竟选用何种参照系的旋转策略,与实验材料和实验任务两者都密不可分     

Mental rotation with egocentric and object-based transformations

Two experiments were conducted to address methodological issues with past studies investigating the influence of egocentric and object-based transformations on performance and sex differences in mental rotation. In previous work, the egocentric and object-based mental rotation tasks confounded the stimulus type (embodied vs. non-embodied) and transformation task (egocentric vs. object-based). In both experiments presented here, the same stimuli were used regardless of the type of transformation but task instructions were modified to induce either egocentric (left–right judgment) or object-based (same–different judgment) processing. Experiment 1 used pairs of letters whereas Experiment 2 presented pairs of line-drawings of human hands. For both experiments, it was hypothesized that the mental rotation slope for response time would be steeper for object-based than for egocentric transformations. This hypothesis was verified in both experiments. Furthermore, Experiment 2 showed a reduced male advantage for egocentric compared to object-based rotations, whereas this pattern was reversed for Experiment 1. In conclusion, the present study showed that the influence of the type of transformation involved in mental rotation can be examined with the same set of stimuli simply by modifying task instructions.     

心理旋转中的性别差异

性别差异是认知心理学中一个重要的研究领域。男性在执行空间认知任务时的表现往往好于女性,在心理旋转任务中,这种现象更为普遍。近年来,人们在行为和脑成像等层面对心理旋转中的性别差异进行了大量的研究,该文通过对其中一部分研究的回顾描述了心理旋转的性别差异在行为及脑成像实验中的表现,总结了可能导致这种性别差异的生理及策略等因素     

物体识别的视角依赖与心理旋转

物体识别的绩效随物体的视角变化而变化,这一物体识别的视角依赖现象引发了研究者对物体识别的机制的广泛讨论。有研究者认为,心理旋转是导致物体识别视角依赖的原因,而另一种观点认为物体识别中不包含心理旋转过程。两种观点都有来自于行为和神经机制两方面研究的证据。然而,现有的行为证据都是间接的证据,缺乏说服力。进一步的研究应注重直接操纵影响心理旋转与物体识别过程的因素,并把行为研究与能进行实时监测的眼动、脑成像等研究结合起来     

想象空间心理旋转的角色效应

第一人称角色心理旋转和第三人称角色心理旋转是人类视觉系统通常采用的两种不同的空间表征动力转换策略。该研究采用实验方法,对违背物理移动规律的两种角色水平面心理旋转进行对比性研究。实验结果表明,想象空间两种角色水平面心理旋转存在显著差异,第三人称角色心理旋转的优势可概括化于旋转轴物理方向与重力方向不一致的水平面心理旋转中。     

身体部位心理旋转的认知与神经机制

除了经典的对于抽象几何图形或字母的心理旋转任务,还有一类心理旋转以手、脚等身体部位图片作为反应刺激。在身体部位心理旋转中,被试一般想象的是自身身体旋转,想象过程受当前身体姿势与身体生理局限性的影响。而在客体心理旋转中,被试往往将刺激作为外在的客体进行想象旋转。两类心理旋转任务都被发现存在顶叶区域的激活,但运动相关皮层的激活更多地在身体部位心理旋转任务中被发现。关于儿童身体部位心理旋转与实际运动的联系紧密性的讨论尚未得到一致的结论,未来研究需要继续探讨随着年龄增长,身体部位心理旋转受生理局限性的影响是增强还是减弱。身体图片加工的自动性,身体部位心理旋转的可塑性也是未来研究可以深入探讨的问题。对于身体部位心理旋转的深入了解也有助于这一任务在临床诊断治疗、运动员与飞行员训练和选拔中的应用。     

角色方式对心理旋转的影响

人类视觉系统通常以第一人称角色和第三人称角色形式建构客体的空间表征,也运用这两种角色方式进行空间表征的动力转换。本研究采用实验方法,对这两种角色方式的心理旋转进行对比性研究。结果发现:空间表征转换的角色方式对心理旋转产生显著影响,第三人称角色心理旋转易于第一人称角色心理旋转,即存在心理旋转的角色效应。     

Analogue Mental Transformations in 3‐Year‐Olds: Introducing a New Mental Rotation Paradigm Suitable for Young Children

Until now, a successful application of the mental rotation paradigm was restricted to children 5 years or older. By contrast, recent findings suggest that even infants can perform mental rotation. Unlike the methods used in infant studies (looking time), our new research paradigm allows for the measurement and interpretation of reaction times. Kindergartners (aged 3–6 years) were presented with a stimulus configuration on a touchscreen and asked to bring a rotated stimulus into an upright position using the shortest path. Mean reaction time (RT) increased linearly with angular disparity. The ensuing linear trend was significant not only for the entire sample but also for the youngest age group analysed separately. To exclude the possibility that linearity was due to movement planning, 3‐year‐olds had to manually rotate a stimulus about the same trajectory without the need for a corresponding mental transformation in a second experiment. Here, no linear trend was observed. These results are interpreted as evidence for an analogue mental transformation in 3‐year‐olds, equal to the transformation processes in older children's and adults' mental rotation. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fear and anxiety modulate mental rotation

We used an emotional priming paradigm to investigate whether fear and anxiety modulate mental rotation of abstract three-dimensional objects (i.e., Shepard-Metzler figures). On each trial, participants viewed pairs of objects and decided whether the objects had the identical shape by mentally rotating the one on the right into congruence with the one on the left. The participants viewed a picture of a face—fearful or neutral—briefly before the pairs of objects appeared. Participants with high state anxiety, and not those with low state anxiety, rotated the objects more quickly after they saw fearful faces than after they saw neutral faces. This result not only documents that fear can improve mental rotation but also shows that this effect is modulated by the emotional arousal of the participants.     

心理旋转的角色效应研究

本研究采用2×4混合实验设计,通过对旋转类型和旋转角度的控制,探讨第一人称角色和第三人称角色心理旋转的差异性。实验结果表明,空间表征转换的角色方式是影响心理旋转的重要因素,第三人称角色心理旋转易于第一人称角色心理旋转。     

复合字母刺激心理旋转加工中的整体优先效应

采用复合字母材料结合正镜像判断任务,首次揭示了心理旋转加工中的整体优先效应。实验一延长复合字母材料的呈现时间,检验心理旋转实验常用的正/镜像判断任务中的视知觉整体优先效应;实验二将实验一的复合字母材料旋转一定角度,考察心理旋转加工中的整体优先效应。结果发现：（1）延长复合字母呈现时间后的字母正镜像判断任务中,被试判断大字母和判断小字母的时间没有显著差异,并且大小字母是否一致对大字母判断和小字母判断的影响无显著差异;（2）在排除了视知觉的整体优先效应存在的情况下,发现心理旋转加工中存在明显的整体优先效应,大字母（整体）旋转条件下的反应时显著短于小字母（局部）旋转条件下的反应时;（3）旋转角度一致性对大字母旋转和小字母旋转条件下的反应时均无显著影响,表明心理旋转的整体优先效应模式可能有别于视知觉加工的整体优先效应模式     

Applications of mental rotation figures of the Shepard and Metzler type and description of a mental rotation stimulus library

The 3D cube figures used by Shepard and Metzler [Shepard, R. N., & Metzler, J. (1971). Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects. Science, 171, 701-703] have been applied in a broad range of studies on mental rotation. This note provides a brief background on these figures, their general use in cognitive psychology and their role in studying spatial behavior. In particular, it is pointed out that large sex differences with the 3D mental rotation figures tend to be observed only in particular tasks, such as the Vandenberg and Kuse test [Vandenberg, S. G., & Kuse, A. R. (1978). Mental rotations, a group test of three-dimensional spatial visualization. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 47, 599-604] that involve multiple figures within a single problem. In contrast, pairwise presentation of the same 3D figures yields either small or no significant sex differences. In the context of the very broad range of ongoing research done with 3D figures, and the desirability of uniformity in the stimulus material used, we introduce a library of 16 cube mental rotation figures, each presented in orientations ranging from 0 to 360 degr in 5 degr steps, and with its mirror image, for a total of 2336 figures. This library, freely available to researchers, will help in the creation of mental rotation tasks both for presentation on the computer screen and for pencil and paper applications.     

视觉表象操作加工的眼动实验研究

本研究通过视觉表象旋转和扫描的眼动实验探讨表象的心理表征方式。实验一结果表明,眼动指标具有与反应时相类似的旋转角度效应。实验二结果显示,表象扫描的反应时和眼动指标都具有与知觉扫描加工一样的距离效应。由此可以认为,表象眼动与知觉眼动模式具有相似性;表象具有相对独立的心理表征方式并有其特殊的加工过程;表象的心理表征可以是形象表征,而非一定是抽象的命题或符号表征