Helmholtz Institute, Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.
Brain Cogn. 2011 Jun;76(1):184-90. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2011.01.008. Epub 2011 Feb 24.
Numerous studies have focused on the distinction between categorical and coordinate spatial relations. Categorical relations are propositional and abstract, and often related to a left hemisphere advantage. Coordinate relations specify the metric information of the relative locations of objects, and can be linked to right hemisphere processing. Yet, not all studies have reported such a clear double dissociation; in particular the categorical left hemisphere advantage is not always reported. In the current study we investigated whether verbal and spatial strategies, verbal and spatial cognitive abilities, and gender could account for the discrepancies observed in hemispheric lateralization of spatial relations. Seventy-five participants performed two visual half field, match-to-sample tasks (Van der Ham, van Wezel, Oleksiak, & Postma, 2007; Van der Ham, Raemaekers, van Wezel, Oleksiak, and Postma, 2009) to study the lateralization of categorical and coordinate relation processing. For each participant we determined the strategy they used in each of the two tasks. Consistent with previous findings, we found an overall categorical left hemisphere advantage and coordinate right hemisphere advantage. The lateralization pattern was affected selectively by the degree to which participants used a spatial strategy and by none of the other variables (i.e., verbal strategy, cognitive abilities, and gender). Critically, the categorical left hemisphere advantage was observed only for participants that relied strongly on a spatial strategy. This result is another piece of evidence that categorical spatial relation processing relies on spatial and not verbal processes.
许多研究都集中在分类和坐标空间关系之间的区别上。分类关系是命题和抽象的，通常与左半球优势有关。坐标关系指定对象相对位置的度量信息，可以与右半球处理相关联。然而，并非所有研究都报告了如此明显的双重分离；特别是，分类的左半球优势并不总是被报道。在当前的研究中，我们调查了言语和空间策略、言语和空间认知能力以及性别是否可以解释空间关系的半球侧化中观察到的差异。75 名参与者进行了两项视觉半视野匹配样本任务（Van der Ham、van Wezel、Oleksiak 和 Postma，2007；Van der Ham、Raemaekers、van Wezel、Oleksiak 和 Postma，2009），以研究分类和坐标关系处理的偏侧化。对于每个参与者，我们确定了他们在两个任务中的每个任务中使用的策略。与先前的发现一致，我们发现了整体的分类左半球优势和坐标右半球优势。这种偏侧化模式选择性地受到参与者使用空间策略的程度的影响，而不受其他任何变量（即言语策略、认知能力和性别）的影响。关键是，只有强烈依赖空间策略的参与者才观察到分类的左半球优势。这一结果是分类空间关系处理依赖于空间而不是言语过程的另一个证据。
