Kail R
Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
J Exp Child Psychol. 1991 Jun;51(3):337-47. doi: 10.1016/0022-0965(91)90081-3.
In two experiments, 9- and 10-year-olds and adults were tested on a mental rotation task in which they judged whether stimuli presented in different orientations were letters or mirror-images of letters. The mental rotation task was performed alone on 48 trials and concurrently with a memory task on 48 additional trials. The concurrent memory task in Experiment 1 was recalling digits; in Experiment 2, recalling positions in a matrix. The key result was that the slope of the function relating response time to stimulus orientation was the same when the mental rotation task was performed alone and when performed concurrently with the memory task. This result is interpreted as showing that mental rotation is an automatic process for both children and adults.
在两项实验中，对9岁、10岁儿童和成年人进行了一项心理旋转任务测试，他们要判断以不同方向呈现的刺激是字母还是字母的镜像。心理旋转任务单独进行48次试验，同时与记忆任务一起进行另外48次试验。实验1中的同时进行的记忆任务是回忆数字；实验2中是回忆矩阵中的位置。关键结果是，当心理旋转任务单独进行时以及与记忆任务同时进行时，反应时间与刺激方向之间关系的函数斜率是相同的。这一结果被解释为表明心理旋转对儿童和成年人来说都是一个自动过程。
