Institute of Physiology and Anatomy, German Sport University Cologne, Germany.
Hum Mov Sci. 2012 Oct;31(5):1151-60. doi: 10.1016/j.humov.2011.12.001. Epub 2012 Jan 14.
This study compares mental rotation with three stimuli: letters, body parts and complex scenes. Twenty-four subjects saw letters and judged whether they were mirror-reversed or not (task LETTER), saw pictures of a hand and indicated whether it was a right or a left one (task HAND), and saw drawings of a person at a table on which a weapon and a rose laid and decided whether the weapon was to the person's right or left (task SCENE). Stimuli were presented in canonical orientation or rotated by up to 180°. Our analyses focused on intra-subject correlations between reaction times of the different tasks. We found that reaction times for stimuli in canonical orientation co-varied in HAND and LETTER, the increase of reaction times with increasing object rotation co-varied in HAND and SCENE, and reaction times for 180° rotations co-varied between all tasks. We suggest that basic processes like visual perception and decision-making are distinct for scenes versus letters and body parts, that the mechanism for mental rotation of letters is distinct from that for mental self- and body part rotation, and suggest an extra mechanism for 180° rotations that shared among all tasks. These findings confirm and expand hypotheses about mental rotation that were based on comparisons of between-subject means.
字母、身体部位和复杂场景。24 名被试者看到字母并判断它们是否是镜像反转的（任务 LETTER），看到手的图片并指出它是右手还是左手（任务 HAND），看到一个人在桌子上的画，桌子上放着一件武器和一朵玫瑰，并决定武器是在人的左边还是右边（任务 SCENE）。刺激物以标准方向呈现或旋转高达 180°。我们的分析集中在不同任务的反应时的个体内相关性上。我们发现，HAND 和 LETTER 中标准方向刺激的反应时存在相关性，HAND 和 SCENE 中随着物体旋转反应时的增加而存在相关性，所有任务中 180°旋转的反应时存在相关性。我们认为，基本的视觉感知和决策过程在场景与字母和身体部位之间是不同的，字母的心理旋转机制与心理自我和身体部位旋转的机制不同，并且建议所有任务之间共享的 180°旋转的额外机制。这些发现证实并扩展了基于组间比较的心理旋转假设。
