Ruthruff E, Miller J, Lachmann T
Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0109, USA.
J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 1995 Jun;21(3):552-70. doi: 10.1037//0096-1523.21.3.552.
Four reaction time experiments examined the mental rotation process using a psychological refractory period paradigm. On each trial, participants made speeded responses to both a tone (S1) and a rotated letter (S2), presented with varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). If mental rotation of the stimulus letter can proceed while central mechanisms are busy with S1, then the effect of orientation should decrease substantially with decreasing SOA. Contrary to these predictions, the effect of orientation was nearly constant across SOAs, suggesting that mental rotation cannot effectively proceed without help from central mechanisms. These results support the conclusion that mental rotation requires access to a single-channel mechanism and must therefore be performed serially with other operations requiring the same mechanism.
四项反应时实验使用心理不应期范式研究了心理旋转过程。在每次试验中，参与者要对一个音调（S1）和一个旋转的字母（S2）做出快速反应，这两个刺激以不同的刺激呈现间隔（SOA）呈现。如果在中枢机制忙于处理S1时，刺激字母的心理旋转能够继续进行，那么随着SOA的减小，方向效应应该会大幅降低。与这些预测相反，方向效应在不同的SOA条件下几乎保持不变，这表明没有中枢机制的帮助，心理旋转无法有效进行。这些结果支持了这样的结论，即心理旋转需要借助单通道机制，因此必须与其他需要相同机制的操作按顺序进行。
