Summary
Participants indicated whether a small dot was located near the top or bottom pole of a rotated object. Response times increased as a function of object orientation more for top trials than for bottom trials. The interaction between orientation and response was shown to be due to a relationship between response times and the dot's height on the screen. The orientation effect was influenced, positively and negatively, by a vertical arrangement of the response keys depending on whether the upper or lower key was used for the top response. Horizontal key placement produced an intermediate orientation effect, with asymmetries of about 180° depending on which hand was used for top responses. This task appears to reflect spatial stimulus-response compatibilities more than object processing.
Participants indicated whether a small dot was located near the top or bottom pole of a rotated object. Response times increased as a function of object orientation more for top trials than for bottom trials. The interaction between orientation and response was shown to be due to a relationship between response times and the dot's height on the screen. The orientation effect was influenced, positively and negatively, by a vertical arrangement of the response keys depending on whether the upper or lower key was used for the top response. Horizontal key placement produced an intermediate orientation effect, with asymmetries of about 180 degrees depending on which hand was used for top responses. This task appears to reflect spatial stimulus-response compatibilities more than object processing.See the full content of this document
Extract
Stimulus-Response Compatibilities During Top-Bottom Discriminations
When participants are required to indicate whether a small dot is located near the top or bottom pole of a rotated object, their response time increases as a linear function of the orientation away from the upright orientation of the depicted object. This description of the response time function tends to suggest that the increase in response times is somehow related to the processing of the object stimulus and its orientation, such as a delay in assigning the top to the stimulus (Rock, 1973). Alternatively, it has been suggested that mental rotation may be required to determine the orientation of a stimulus (de Caro, 1998), which would then suggest that the response time pattern shown during the topbottom task may also reflect mental rotation. Indeed, the topbottom discrimination task shows a response time function that is symmetrical about 180° of rotation, which is typical of mental rotation functions (Cooper & Shepard, 1973; Shepard & Metzler, 1971). However, a patient with right basal ganglia damage has been reported to show impairment on mental rotation tasks but normal performance on top-bottom discrimination tasks (Harris, Harris, & Caine, 2002), suggesting the effects of orientation during top-bottom discriminations are not due to mental rotation.
Furthermore, to mentally rotate an image to the depicted object's normal upright orientation through the shortest angular distance, one must know the current orientation and the normal upright orientation of the depicted object. Without this information, one could not determine the direction that res...See the full content of this document
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