Nagashima Izumi, Takeda Kotaro, Shimoda Nobuaki, Harada Yusuke, Mochizuki Hideki
Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Health Sciences, Kyorin University, Mitaka, Japan.
Faculty of Rehabilitation, School of Healthcare, Fujita Health University, Toyoake, Japan.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2019 Jul 19;13:252. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00252. eCollection 2019.
A hand mental rotation task (HMRT) is a task wherein a person judges whether an image of a rotated hand is of the right or left hand. Two performance strategies are expected to come into play when performing these tasks: a visual imagery (VI) strategy, in which an image is mentally rotated, and a motor imagery (MI) strategy, in which the movement of a person's own hand is simulated. Although elderly people generally take some time to perform these tasks, ability differs greatly between individuals. The present study hypothesizes that there is a relationship between differences in task performance strategy and performance ability, and it compares performance strategy among elderly people divided into groups with a short mental rotation time and a long mental rotation time. In response to images of the palm, both groups displayed a medial-lateral effect in which responses were faster for images where the third finger was rotated toward the midline of the body than images rotated in the opposite direction, and we inferred that an MI strategy was primarily employed. Meanwhile, in response to images of the back of the hand, a medial-lateral effect was also observed in the group with a long mental rotation time and not in the group with the shortest mental rotation time (VI strategy). These results suggest that different strategies for performing HMRT task are used by elderly people with a short mental rotation time and those with a long mental rotation time.
手部心理旋转任务（HMRT）是一项要求人们判断旋转后的手部图像是右手还是左手的任务。在执行这些任务时，预计会有两种表现策略发挥作用：一种是视觉表象（VI）策略，即通过心理旋转图像；另一种是运动表象（MI）策略，即模拟个人自己手部的运动。尽管老年人通常需要一些时间来完成这些任务，但个体之间的能力差异很大。本研究假设任务表现策略的差异与表现能力之间存在关联，并比较了分为心理旋转时间短和心理旋转时间长两组的老年人的表现策略。对于手掌图像，两组都表现出一种内外侧效应，即与第三根手指向身体中线旋转的图像相比，第三根手指向相反方向旋转的图像的反应更快，并且我们推断主要采用了MI策略。同时，对于手背图像，心理旋转时间长的组观察到了内外侧效应，而心理旋转时间最短的组（VI策略）则没有观察到。这些结果表明，心理旋转时间短的老年人和心理旋转时间长的老年人在执行HMRT任务时使用了不同的策略。
