Ruotolo Francesco, van der Ham Ineke J M, Iachini Tina, Postma Albert
Department of Psychology, Second University of Naples, Naples, Italy.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2011 Jun;64(6):1138-56. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2010.539700. Epub 2011 Jan 24.
We report two experiments on the relationship between allocentric/egocentric frames of reference and categorical/coordinate spatial relations. Jager and Postma (2003) suggest two theoretical possibilities about their relationship: categorical judgements are better when combined with an allocentric reference frame and coordinate judgements with an egocentric reference frame (interaction hypothesis); allocentric/egocentric and categorical/coordinate form independent dimensions (independence hypothesis). Participants saw stimuli comprising two vertical bars (targets), one above and the other below a horizontal bar. They had to judge whether the targets appeared on the same side (categorical) or at the same distance (coordinate) with respect either to their body-midline (egocentric) or to the centre of the horizontal bar (allocentric). The results from Experiment 1 showed a facilitation in the allocentric and categorical conditions. In line with the independence hypothesis, no interaction effect emerged. To see whether the results were affected by the visual salience of the stimuli, in Experiment 2 the luminance of the horizontal bar was reduced. As a consequence, a significant interaction effect emerged indicating that categorical judgements were more accurate than coordinate ones, and especially so in the allocentric condition. Furthermore, egocentric judgements were as accurate as allocentric ones with a specific improvement when combined with coordinate spatial relations. The data from Experiment 2 showed that the visual salience of stimuli affected the relationship between allocentric/egocentric and categorical/coordinate dimensions. This suggests that the emergence of a selective interaction between the two dimensions may be modulated by the characteristics of the task.
我们报告了两项关于异心/自我中心参照系与分类/坐标空间关系之间关系的实验。雅格和波斯特马（2003年）提出了关于它们关系的两种理论可能性：分类判断与异心参照系结合时更好，坐标判断与自我中心参照系结合时更好（交互作用假说）；异心/自我中心和分类/坐标形成独立维度（独立假说）。参与者观看了由两条垂直条（目标）组成的刺激物，一条在水平条上方，另一条在水平条下方。他们必须判断目标相对于他们的身体中线（自我中心）或水平条的中心（异心）是出现在同一侧（分类）还是在相同距离（坐标）。实验1的结果显示在异心和分类条件下有促进作用。与独立假说一致，没有出现交互作用效应。为了观察结果是否受到刺激物视觉显著性的影响，在实验2中降低了水平条的亮度。结果，出现了显著的交互作用效应，表明分类判断比坐标判断更准确，尤其是在异心条件下。此外，自我中心判断与异心判断一样准确，与坐标空间关系结合时会有特定的提高。实验2的数据表明，刺激物的视觉显著性影响了异心/自我中心和分类/坐标维度之间的关系。这表明这两个维度之间选择性交互作用的出现可能受到任务特征的调节。
