Imagined spatial transformation of one's body

This study examined two related phenomena: (a) the judgment of whether a human body part belongs to the left or right half of the body and (b) the imagined spatial transformation of one's body. In three experiments, observers made left-right judgments of a part of a body whose orientation differed from their own by a rotation about one of 13 axes. To do so, they imagined themselves passing to the orientation of the stimulus. Time for (a) left-right judgments and (b) accompanying imagined spatial transformations depended on the extent of the orientation difference (OD) between the observer and stimulus. More important, time for phenomena (a) and (b) depended strongly, and in the same way, on the direction of OD. Further results showed that the rate of imagined spatial transformations can vary strongly for different axes and directions of rotation about an axis. These and other results (e.g., Parsons, 1987a) suggest that temporal and kinematic properties of imagined spatial transformations are more object-specific than could be previously assumed.     

Imagined own-body transformations during passive self-motion

Spatial perspective taking is a crucial social skill that underlies many of our everyday interactions. Previous studies have suggested that spatial perspective taking is an embodied process that involves the integration of both motor and proprioceptive information. Given the importance of vestibular signals for own-body perception, mental own-body imagery, and bodily self-consciousness, in the present study we hypothesized that vestibular stimulation due to passive own-body displacements should also modulate spatial perspective taking. Participants performed an own-body transformation task while being passively rotated in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction on a human motion platform. A congruency effect was observed, reflected in faster reaction times if the implied mental body rotation direction matched the actual rotation direction of the chair. These findings indicate that vestibular stimulation modulates and facilitates mental perspective taking, thereby highlighting the importance of integrating multisensory bodily information for spatial perspective taking.     

Mental transformations in the identification of left and right hands.

Subjects determined as rapidly as possible whether each line drawing portrayed a left or a right hand when the drawings were presented in any of four versions (palm or back of either hand) and in any of six orientations in the picture plane. Reaction time varied systematically with orientation and, in the absence of advance information, was over 400 msec longer for the fingers-down orientation. However, when subjects were instructed to imagine a specified (palm or back) view of a specified (left or right) hand in a specified orientation, reaction times to test hands that were consistent with these instructions were short (about 500 msec), independent of orientation, and unacompanied by errors. It is proposed that subjects determine whether a visually presented hand is left or right by moving a mental "phantom" of one of their own hands into the portrayed position and by then comparing its imagined appearance against the appearance of the externally presented hand.     

Infant brain responses to felt and observed touch of hands and feet: an MEG study

There is growing interest concerning the ways in which the human body, both one's own and that of others, is represented in the developing human brain. In two experiments with 7‐month‐old infants, we employed advances in infant magnetoencephalography (MEG) brain imaging to address novel questions concerning body representations in early development. Experiment 1 evaluated the spatiotemporal organization of infants’ brain responses to being touched. A punctate touch to infants’ hands and feet produced significant activation in the hand and foot areas of contralateral primary somatosensory cortex as well as in other parietal and frontal areas. Experiment 2 explored infant brain responses to visually perceiving another person's hand or foot being touched. Results showed significant activation in early visual regions and also in regions thought to be involved in multisensory body and self–other processing. Furthermore, observed touch of the hand and foot activated the infant's own primary somatosensory cortex, although less consistently than felt touch. These findings shed light on aspects of early social cognition, including action imitation, which may build, at least in part, on infant neural representations that map equivalences between the bodies of self and other.     

The role of animacy in spatial transformations

We present evidence that different mental spatial transformations are used to reason about three different types of items representing a spectrum of animacy: human bodies, nonhuman animals, and inanimate objects. Participants made two different judgments about rotated figures: handedness judgments (“Is this the left or right side?”) and matching judgments (“Are these figures the same?”). Perspective-taking strategies were most prevalent when participants made handedness judgments about human bodies and animals. In contrast, participants generally did not imagine changes in perspective to perform matching judgments. Such results suggest that high-level information about semantic categories, including information about a thing’s animacy, can influence how spatial representations are transformed when performing online problem solving. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://mc.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Keeping one's distance: the influence of spatial distance cues on affect and evaluation

Current conceptualizations of psychological distance (e.g., construal-level theory) refer to the degree of overlap between the self and some other person, place, or point in time. We propose a complementary view in which perceptual and motor representations of physical distance influence people's thoughts and feelings without reference to the self, extending research and theory on the effects of distance into domains where construal-level theory is silent. Across four experiments, participants were primed with either spatial closeness or spatial distance by plotting an assigned set of points on a Cartesian coordinate plane. Compared with the closeness prime, the distance prime produced greater enjoyment of media depicting embarrassment (Study 1), less emotional distress from violent media (Study 2), lower estimates of the number of calories in unhealthy food (Study 3), and weaker reports of emotional attachments to family members and hometowns (Study 4). These results support a broader conceptualization of distance-mediated effects on judgment and affect.     

When hearts,hands, and feet trump brains: Centralist versus peripheralist responses in children and adults

A series of studies examined the presence of centralist versus peripheralist responding about the physical location of psychological processes. Centralists respond that processes such as cognition and emotion are a function of the brain. Peripheralists respond that such processes are located in other parts of the body, such as the heart. Although peripheralist responses declined across grade levels, even older children and adults often gave peripheralist answers, depending on the context of the questions. Peripheralist responses occurred when participants were asked about the effect of switching irrelevant body parts between two people and when they were asked to choose a different body part among four choices. Results also showed adults' responses varied with different contextual cues. The findings support a coexistence model of development which argues for the simultaneous presence of developmentally advanced reasoning or scientifically based knowledge along with presumably less advanced, intuitive‐based reasoning, or folk beliefs.     

Accurately locating one's spatial position in one's environment during a navigation task: Adaptive activity for finding or setting control flags in orienteering

ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to compare orienteers' modes of adaptation to different environments. Emphasis is placed on characterizing their concerns in relation to the need to accurately locate one's spatial position during orienteering.Design and methodsThe activity of eight orienteers was studied on two navigation tasks: (a) a classic orienteering task, and (b) a setting-orienteering task. The data were collected and processed using a procedure defined for course-of-action analysis. The methodology used video recordings of the orienteers in natural settings made by a glasses camera, and verbalizations during self-confrontation interviews conducted with four participants. Processing the qualitative data consisted of reconstructing the orienteers' course of experience. A further statistical analysis enabled us to identify events pertaining to map reading and pace.ResultsThe analysis uncovered similarities and differences in the sequential organization of the orienteers' activity classic and setting tasks that were related to particular phases of the two courses and to time pressure. The results stress two fundamentally different modes of navigating and locating one's spatial position in one's environment.ConclusionsThe navigation activity and its adaptive nature are discussed in relation to the significant structural characteristics of the environment. The results are put in perspective in reference to the fast-and-frugal-heuristics approach, and several perspectives for skill acquisition are examined. It is suggested that this study could have broader implications for sport psychologists and sport instructors, in various sports requiring navigational skills in complex and dynamic environments.     

On inferring one's beliefs from one's attempt and consequences for subsequent compliance

D. J. Bem (1967, 1972) has suggested that a person may infer his or her beliefs from his or her actions. With his information-processing viewpoint, D. J. Bem proposed that individuals, by observing their past behaviors, may draw information for assessing their beliefs about themselves. There is a question, however, about the mechanism of self-perception when there is inconsistency between one's attempt to realize an intended goal and the outcome of the action. In a series of field studies, participants who had unsuccessfully tried to help a stranger were more willing to comply with a relatively large request made later. Implications for self-perception theory as well as for enhancing susceptibility to influence techniques are discussed.     

Understanding spatial transformations: similarities and differences between mental rotation and mental folding

Mental rotation and mental folding, two widely used measures of spatial ability, both require the dynamic spatial transformation of objects with respect to their internal spatial structure. Traditionally, however, these two skills have been considered quite distinct, based primarily on factor analyses of psychometric data. This paper reviews the similarities and differences between mental rotation and mental folding from a variety of perspectives, including their definitions, component cognitive processes, neurological bases, developmental trajectories, malleability, predictive validity, and psychometric properties. We conclude that mental rotation and mental folding are similar in many respects. However, the tasks differ in whether they require rigid or non-rigid transformations of objects. In addition, mental rotation shows robust sex-related differences whereas mental folding does not. We also identify specific questions for which research is lacking.     

对想象环境的空间更新

学界传统上将空间更新定义为个体随着身体运动对其所处真实环境空间表征的自动更新过程, 然而近年来有研究发现个体还可以对想象环境进行空间更新, 但其机制尚不明确。本研究实验1被试站在场景内学习物体空间位置之后, 保持学习朝向直线走到测试位置。其中, 0度组保持学习朝向站立, 180度组原地转动180度, 面对学习朝向的相反方向站立。两组被试均想象自己仍然站在学习位置, 面对学习朝向。然后被试旋转90度, 从3个想象朝向(记忆一致朝向、感觉运动一致朝向和不一致朝向)完成空间判断任务。结果发现0度组记忆一致朝向和感觉运动一致朝向成绩均优于不一致朝向, 而180度组无此优势。实验2被试从学习空间移动到测试空间过程中被迷向, 其他条件与实验1的180度组相同。但是, 实验2被试在记忆一致朝向和感觉运动一致朝向的成绩均优于不一致朝向。结果证明人们可以通过对在线空间表征进行想象平移或将离线记忆与空间更新系统相联结两种方式, 对想象环境进行空间更新。     

Estimating one's own and one's relatives' multiple intelligence: a study from Argentina

Participants from Argentina (N = 217) estimated their own, their partner's, their parents' and their grandparents' overall and multiple intelligences. The Argentinean data showed that men gave higher overall estimates than women (M = 110.4 vs. 105.1) as well as higher estimates on mathematical and spatial intelligence. Participants thought themselves slightly less bright than their fathers (2 IQ points) but brighter than their mothers (6 points), their grandfathers (8 points), but especially their grandmothers (11 points). Regressions showed that participants thought verbal and mathematical IQ to be the best predictors of overall IQ. Results were broadly in agreement with other studies in the area. A comparison was also made with British data using the same questionnaire. British participants tended to give significantly higher self-estimates than for relatives, though the pattern was generally similar. Results are discussed in terms of the studies in the field.     

Separating mental transformations and spatial compatibility effects in the own body transformation task

Laterality judgments about the left or right hand of a schematic human figure, made from the perspective of the figure, are faster and more accurate when the figure is presented in back-facing view as compared to front-facing view. Mental perspective transformation accounts of this finding have recently been challenged on grounds of a confounding of facing direction with spatial stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility (Gardner and Potts in Acta Psychol 137: 371-381, 2011). We report two experiments that introduced stimulus figures in an orientation that was neutral in terms of spatial S-R compatibility. Results revealed a stable back-facing advantage that cannot be explained by compatibility conflicts. Comparisons of these neutral stimuli and conditions with figures presented in upright or upside-down orientation, however, confirmed a substantial impact of spatial S-R compatibility in the latter conditions. The present experiments show that it is possible to distinguish between mental transformation and incompatibility costs allowing future work to focus on the specialized mental spatial transformation processes.     

Tracking and anticipation of invisible spatial transformations by 4- to 8-month-old infants

The ability of 4- to 8-month-old infants to track and anticipate the final orientation of an object following different invisible spatial transformations was tested. A violation-of-expectation method was used to assess infants' reaction to possible and impossible outcomes of an object's orientation after it translated or rotated behind an occluder. Results of a first experiment show that at all ages infants tend to look significantly longer at an impossible orientation outcome following invisible transformations. These results suggest that from 4 months of age, infants have the ability to detect orientation-specific information about an object undergoing linear or curvilinear invisible spatial transformations. A second experiment controlling for perceptual cues that infants might have used in the first experiment to track the object orientation replicates the results with a new sample of 4- and 6-month-old infants. Finally, a control experiment involving no motion yielded negative results, providing further support that infants as young as 4 months old use motion information to mentally track invisible spatial transformations. The results obtained in the rotation condition of both experiments are tentatively interpreted as providing first evidence of some rudiments of mental rotation in infancy.     

The Imagined Immunities of Defense Nationalism

This article examines the narratives, imaginaries, and subjectivities that underpin the far-right, ethnic nationalist “defense leagues” that have emerged in Australia (and across Europe) in the past decade. Referencing three, interrelated nationalist events in Australia—the Cronulla Riots, Cronulla Memorial Day, and the “race-riot” that occurred in Melbourne on January 5, 2019—I argue that defense leagues resist conceptualization through existing theories of nationalism and community, including those articulated by Anderson, Hage, and Esposito. Drawing on Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, I argue that unlike other nationalists, defense nationalists are not primarily concerned with realizing their avowed political projects (such as fortifying national borders, halting immigration, and preserving so-called national values). Instead, they are focused on constructing and enjoying themselves as the privileged national subjects who get to do the nation's defending. As I elaborate, the enjoyment they derive from defending the nation—which is approximate to the Lacanian concept of jouissance—means that paradoxically, that which threatens the nation legitimizes and fortifies the nationalist, because the more the nation is threatened, the more the nationalist's perceived role within it is secured. Ultimately, I argue this jouissance salvages a symbolic life within the nation that is always-already dead.     

An examination of how one's attitudes toward women are reflected in one's defensiveness and self-esteem

The Berger Self-Esteem Measure, the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, and Spence's (1972) Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS) were used to test 96 undergraduates. Subjects were divided according to sex and median split scores on the personality measures. Analysis of variance revealed a significant main effect for sex and defensiveness and approached significance for the sex × self-esteem effect (p<.10). Males and females were found to respond significantly differently on the AWS scale. Highly defensive males were more discriminating toward women and self-concept appeared to be an influential variable. However, self-esteem alone did not seem to have any significant effects.     

Gestalt grouping effects on tactile information processing: when touching hands override spatial proximity

Using a tactile variant of the negative-priming paradigm, we analyzed the influence of Gestalt grouping on the ability of participants to ignore distracting tactile information. The distance between participants’ hands, to which the target and distractor stimuli were simultaneously delivered, was varied (near/touching hands vs. hands far apart). In addition, the influence of touching hands was controlled, as participants wore gloves and their hands were blocked from vision by a cover. The magnitude of the tactile negative-priming effect was modulated by the interaction between hand separation and whether or not gloves were worn. When the hands were touching, negative priming emerged only while wearing gloves that prevented direct skin-to-skin contact. In contrast, when the separation between the participants’ hands was larger, negative priming emerged only when gloves were not worn. This pattern of results is interpreted in terms of the competing influences of two interacting Gestalt principles—namely, connectedness and proximity—on the processing of tactile distractors.