MENTAL ROTATION

Psychology

Abstract

The study is based on mental rotation which mainly focuses on angle of rotation with respect to women and men. The study presents that there are no differences in angle of rotation for women and men, as women and men have not presented significant difference for angle of rotation. Besides it, the study also revealed that angle of rotation for both men and women is high.

Abstract2

Introduction4

Method5

Results6

Discussion8

Introduction

The study relates to mental rotation which particularly focuses on angle of rotation with respect to men and women. In this context, it is important to note that mental rotation is the ability to rotate mental representations of two and three dimensional objects. We are believed to take place in the same areas of perception is associated with spatial processing and intelligence. Past researchers described the psychological process of mental rotation. In the experiment, pairs of three-dimensional shapes are presented in different orientations (eg., One could appear rotated 60 degrees to the other) and asked participants to indicate whether the two figures were identical or whether, on the contrary, was the mirror image of the other (Shepard & Metzler, 1971). The results showed that the time required to respond was larger as the rotation angle increased. The explanation given for this result was that the people, to make a decision regarding the equality of two images, we must mentally rotate one of them to place it in its normal position. Since this pioneering work, the mental rotation process described with letters, numbers, hands and other natural objects.

In recent years, research in the area of Cognitive Neuroscience found that mental rotation of the images not only increases the response time but also causes a change or modulation evoked cerebral potential. The ERPs are voltage fluctuations in electroencephalogram (EEG) events caused by sensory, motor or cognitive. In mental rotation tasks has been observed that approximately 400 ms after the appearance of the object, you see a negative wave in parietal regions. This wave, which is called the rotation related negativity, has a more negative voltage increases as the rotation angle, so it has been considered an indicator neuro-physiological mind the amount of rotation needed to place the object in its vertical position (Kosslyn, Brunn, Cave & Wallach, 1984).

Researches involving mental rotation tasks have revealed another phenomenon, in addition to that described above, which has received less interest among scientists. Namely, it was found that, regardless of the rotation angle of the object is the time to make the decision that an object has been presented in its symmetric version is greater than the time to make the decision that the object has been presented in its standard version (Paivio &Harshman, 1983). This result is explained by arguing that, given an object rotated in symmetrical version, first mentally rotate it on the plane to place it in its upright position, and then turn out of the plane mentally to place it in its normal position (Harshman &Paivio, 1987). This latest twist is responsible for the increase in response ...