Egocentric Mental Rotation Research Articles

Motor affordance or gender-stereotyped nature of physical activity – what is more important for the mental rotation performance of female athletes?

ABSTRACT The main goal of this study is to examine the relationship between mental rotation performance of female athletes and sports that are gender stereotyped and show different motor demand profiles. 94 female athletes (handball, combat sport, sport students) participated in an egocentric and object-based mental rotation task using figures of human body stimuli presented in front or back view. Rather male-stereotyped combat sports include many body rotations with changing motion patterns, female sport students learn many new exercises in different types of sport (female stereotyped), handball training (non-stereotyped) contains mainly cardiovascular and tactical challenges. The main result was that a long-term specific sporting expertise is more important for mental rotation performance than the gender-stereotyped sport classification even if gender-role differences are included as covariate. This indicates, that for women specific motor components seem to be more important for the development of mental rotation ability than gender-stereotype aspects.

Dancers’ Perceptual Skills: An ethnographic, cognitive and phenomenological study

The extensive use of devising techniques in contemporary choreography stimulates the interest of dance practitioners in the performer’s perceptual skills. They are considered crucial for developing new creative strategies. In the article, we analyse Fighting Monkey (FM) – a training method developed by Jozef Frucek and Linda Kapetanea – as technique that is explicitly focused on the development of perception through physical training. We developed the research from three parallel conceptual frameworks. In the first (auto)ethnographic perspective, researchers’ and participants’ practice, as well as written reports from FM workshops, worked as a tool for pointing out particular exercises and assessing their impact on the dancer’s performance. Conclusions derived were then used as primary premises for the analysis in the second, cognitive, perspective. Its use was justified by existing studies on the impact of motor training on cognitive functions and models of research-based practice (Hansen 2018). Based on both sources, a study of selected perceptual abilities was designed and conducted with the participation of dance students randomly assigned to two training groups: FM, and Contemporary Dance technique designed to resemble standard curriculum. After 20-hours of practice, participants showed persisting, improved results in cognitive tests. The FM group showed an increased correctness of the response in the first-person (egocentric) mental body rotation task, which may indicate a better kinesthetic representation of the body (Kaltner, Riecke, Jansen, 2014). A detailed discussion was then performed with the use of the third, phenomenological, perspective that allowed isolation of particular differences in training that were the reasons for differences between the groups. At the same time, phenomenology was utilized as a methodological medium between the third-person research and the first-person experience. As such, it was used to formulate research conclusions in the discussion, covering the relationship between the training techniques, improvement of perceptual functions and the understanding of creative competences of dancers and choreographers.

Identifying solution strategies in a mental-rotation test with gender-stereotyped objects by analyzing gaze patterns

Many studies deal with solution strategies in mental-rotation tests. The approaches range from global analysis, attention to object parts, holistic and piecemeal strategy to a combined strategy. Other studies do not speak of strategies, but of holistic or piecemeal processes or even of holistic or piecemeal rotation. The methodological approach used here is to identify mental-rotation strategies via gaze patterns derived from eye-tracking data when solving chronometric mental-rotation tasks with gender-stereotyped objects. The mental-rotation test consists of 3 male-stereotyped objects (locomotive, hammer, wrench) and 3 femalestereotyped objects (pram, hand mirror, brush) rotated at eight different angles. The sample consisted of 16 women and 10 men (age: M=21.58; SD=4.21). The results of a qualitative analysis with two individual objects (wrench and brush) showed four different gaze patterns. These gaze patterns appeared with different frequency in the two objects and correlated differently with performance and response time. The results indicate either an objectoriented or an egocentric mental-rotation strategy behind the gaze patterns. In general, a new methodological approach has been developed to identify mental-rotation strategies bottom-up which can also be used for other stimulus types.

The Relation of Mental Rotation and Postural Stability

Main goal of this study was to investigate the influence of mental rotation tasks on postural stability. 84 participants were tested with two object-based mental rotation tasks (cube vs. human figures), an egocentric mental rotation task with one human figure, a math- (cognitive control) and a neutral task, while standing on a force plate in a both-legged narrow stance. Parameters related to the Center of Pressure course over time were used to quantify postural stability. The simultaneous solution of mental rotation tasks has led to postural stabilisation compared to the neutral condition. Egocentric tasks provoked more postural stability than object-based tasks with cube figures. Furthermore, a more stable stance was observed for embodied stimuli than for cube figures. An explorative approach showed the tendency that higher rotation angles of the object-based mental rotation task stimuli lead to more postural sway. These results contribute to a better understanding of the interaction between mental rotation and motor skills and emphasize the role of type of task and embodiment in dual task research.

Correlational Evidence for the Role of Spatial Perspective-Taking Ability in the Mental Rotation of Human-Like Objects

. People can mentally rotate objects that resemble human bodies more efficiently than nonsense objects in the same/different judgment task. Previous studies proposed that this human-body advantage in mental rotation is mediated by one's projections of body axes onto a human-like object, implying that human-like objects elicit a strategy shift, from an object-based to an egocentric mental rotation. To test this idea, we investigated whether mental rotation performance involving a human-like object had a stronger association with spatial perspective-taking, which entails egocentric mental rotation, than a nonsense object. In the present study, female participants completed a chronometric mental rotation task with nonsense and human-like objects. Their spatial perspective-taking ability was then assessed using the Road Map Test and the Spatial Orientation Test. Mental rotation response times (RTs) were shorter for human-like than for nonsense objects, replicating previous research. More importantly, spatial perspective-taking had a stronger negative correlation with RTs for human-like than for nonsense objects. These findings suggest that human-like stimuli in the same/different mental rotation task induce a strategy shift toward efficient egocentric mental rotation.

Spatial and egocentric mental rotation in patients with cervical dystonia.

Mental rotation has attracted the interest of cognitive research on dystonia, but at the moment, contrasting data are available on whether this complex cognitive ability is impaired in the disorder. Here, we assessed spatial and egocentric mental rotation in patients with cervical dystonia (CD). Patients with CD and healthy controls were required to perform a letter rotation task (spatial mental rotation) and to judge laterality of front-facing and back-facing human images (egocentric mental rotation). CD patients were selectively impaired on letter rotation, whereas they did not differ from controls when judging laterality of both front-facing and back-facing bodies. These findings support the view according to which neural circuits involved in spatial processing are dysfunctional in CD.

Manipulation ability of internal representation in patients with euthymic bipolar I disorder and schizophrenia using a mental rotation task.

A growing body of literature has suggested that effective emotion regulation is influenced by cognitive function. Maintenance and manipulation of internal representations occur in working memory (WM), and impairments of WM have been reported in patients with bipolar disorder. We examined the manipulation ability of internal representations in WM using mental rotation (MR) tasks, and compared the task performances of euthymic bipolar I disorder patients to those of schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. In this study, 20 euthymic bipolar I disorder patients, 20 schizophrenia patients, and 38 healthy controls were recruited. People and letter MR tasks were employed to evaluate the ability of WM manipulation. Compared to healthy controls, euthymic bipolar I disorder patients showed substantially higher error rates of people MR task and slower responses in both people and letter MR tasks. Schizophrenia patients showed no difference in error rate and response time in MR tasks compared to healthy controls; however, they showed significantly slower responses in people MR task compared to controls. MR task performance was not different between euthymic bipolar and schizophrenia patients. Our study results indicate that manipulation of internal representation, especially in the egocentric MR, is impaired in bipolar disorder even in the emotionally-stable state. We speculate that impaired imagery manipulation might be related to alterations in empathic ability, susceptibility of mental imagery, and emotion regulation strategies observed in bipolar disorder.

The Role of Time Constraints in Athletes' Egocentric Mental Rotation Performance.

A selective effect of motor expertise on mental rotation is revealed by a high correlation between the performance of sports experts and ability on a mental rotation task. Evidence is shown by studies involving a spatial factor, such as image interference or a movement constraint. Alternatively, the time constraint, as another performance factor, is considered critical in the effect of sport expertise on mental rotation. Three experiments were conducted to examine the role of time constraints in egocentric mental rotation and the stage performance of athletes (divers) and nonathletes. In Experiment 1, an egocentric mental rotation task in an untimed condition was conducted, and reaction times (RTs), error rates (ERs), RTs at 0 °, and mental rotation speed were assessed. The results indicated that divers outperformed nonathletes in terms of RT, as well as perceptual and decision stages and rotation stages. Experiments 2 and 3 added a relative time constraint (subtracting 1/2 SD of all the subjects’ RT from the M of each group’s RT) and an absolute time constraint (subtracting 1/2 SD of all the subjects’ RT from the M of all the subjects’ RT) to the task, respectively. Superior RT and lower ER were observed for the divers in the time constraint condition. Moreover, the results illustrated that divers were faster than nonathletes in both stages when facing time pressure. In general, the present study has, for the first time, confirmed the role of time in the relationship between sports expertise and mental rotation.

Shared neural mechanisms between imagined and perceived egocentric motion – A combined GVS and fMRI study

Many cognitive and social processes involve mental simulations of a change in perspective. Behavioral studies suggest that such egocentric mental rotations rely on brain areas that are also involved in processing actual self-motion, thus depending on vestibular input. In a combined galvanic vestibular stimulation (GVS) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study, we investigated the brain areas that underlie both simulated changes in self-location and the processing of vestibular stimulation within the same individuals. Participants performed an egocentric mental rotation task, an object-based mental rotation task, or a pure lateralization task during GVS or sham stimulation. At the neural level, we expected an overlap between brain areas activated during vestibular processing and egocentric mental rotation (against object-based mental rotation) within area OP2 and the Posterior Insular Cortex (PIC), two core brain regions involved in vestibular processing. The fMRI data showed a small overlap within area OP2 and a larger overlap within the PIC for both egocentric mental rotation against object-based mental rotation and vestibular processing. GVS did not influence the ability to perform egocentric mental rotation. Our results provide evidence for shared neural mechanisms underlying perceived and simulated self-motion. We conclude that mental rotation of one's body involves neural activity in the PIC and area OP2, but the behavioral results also suggest that those mental simulations of one's body might be robust to modulatory input from vestibular stimulation.

The Choice of Sports Affects Mental Rotation Performance in Adolescents.

This study investigates mental rotation performance of adolescent female dancers and soccer players in object-based and egocentric mental rotation tasks using human body stimuli. 60 young females, 30 soccer players, and 30 dancers (not twosome), completed a chronometric mental rotation task with object-based and egocentric transformation of male and female figures, which were displayed either in front or back view. During their sport-specific activity soccer-players and dancers very often have to adapt their movements to the movement of a partner or opponent, soccer-players especially in front view positions. While for soccer-players reaction time (RT) often is crucial for sporting success, dancers mainly focus on the accuracy of their movements. Therefore, we expect significantly faster RTs for soccer players for front view stimuli but no differences between soccer players and dancers for back view stimuli. The main result was that soccer-players showed a significantly shorter RT than dancers for stimuli presented in front view in object based and egocentric transformation. There was no such difference, when the stimuli were presented in the back view. Contrary to literature we didn’t find significantly higher RTs and error rates for stimuli presented in front view compared to back view in general but only for egocentric transformations. The results of this study show that specific sports affect individual aspects of mental rotation performance.

Mental rotation and handedness: differences in object-based and egocentric transformations

ABSTRACTThis study investigates mental rotation performance of right- and left-handers in object-based and egocentric mental rotation tasks using human body stimuli with an outstretched arm in front and back view. Previous literature suggests that right-handers show a slightly better mental rotation performance than left-handers. 42 participants, 14 left-handers and 28 right-handers, completed a mental rotation task with object-based and egocentric transformation of a human figure which was displayed either in front or back view. The main result was a three-way interaction between the factors “kind of transformation”, “handedness” and “view” in a way, that right-handers show significantly faster reaction times then left-handers in front view object-based transformations because of the additional in-depth rotation for front view stimuli. This difference disappeared in egocentric tasks due to the modification of onés own perspective to solve the task. The results of this study show that right-handers not generally outperform left-handers in mental rotation tasks but only if more cognitive resources are needed.

Object-Based and Egocentric Mental Rotation Performance in Women With Breast Cancer

Object-Based and Egocentric Mental Rotation Performance in Women With Breast Cancer

Similarities and differences in visual and spatial perspective-taking processes

Processes for perspective-taking can be differentiated on whether or not they require us to mentally rotate ourselves into the position of the other person (Michelon & Zacks, 2006). Until now, only two perspective-taking tasks have been differentiated in this way, showing that judging whether something is to someone’s left or right does require mental rotation, but judging if someone can see something or not does not. These tasks differ firstly on whether the content of the perspective is visual or spatial and secondly on whether the type of the judgement is early-developing (level-1 type) or later-developing (level-2 type). Across two experiments, we tested which of these factors was likely to be most important by using four different perspective-taking tasks which crossed orthogonally the content of judgement (visual vs. spatial) and the type of judgement (level-1 type vs. level-2 type). We found that the level-2 type judgements, of how something looks to someone else and whether it is to their left or right, required egocentric mental rotation. On the other hand, level-1 type judgements, of whether something was in front of or behind someone and of whether someone could see something or not, did not involve mental rotation. We suggest from this that the initial processing strategies employed for perspective-taking are largely independent of whether judgements are visual or spatial in nature. Furthermore, early developing abilities have features that make mental rotation unnecessary.

Object-based and egocentric mental rotation performance in older adults: The importance of gender differences and motor ability

ABSTRACTIn this study, mental rotation performance was assessed in both an object-based task, human figures and letters as stimuli, and in an egocentric-based task, a human figure as a stimulus, in 60 older persons between 60 and 71 years old (30 women, 30 men). Additionally all participants completed three motor tests measuring balance and mobility. The results show that the reaction time was slower for letters than for both human figure tasks and the mental rotation speed was faster over all for egocentric mental rotation tasks. Gender differences were found in the accuracy measurement, favoring males, and were independent of stimulus type, kind of transformation, and angular disparity. Furthermore, a regression analysis showed that the accuracy rate for object-based transformations with body stimuli could be predicted by gender and balance ability. This study showed that the mental rotation performance in older adults depends on stimulus type, kind of transformation, and gender and that performance partially relates to motor ability.

Impaired Passive Maintenance and Spared Manipulation of Internal Representations in Patients With Schizophrenia

Working memory (WM) impairment is a core feature of schizophrenia (SZ), but the integrity of the various components of WM is unclear. After encoding, mental representations must be maintained in WM during the delay period. In addition to maintenance, manipulation of internal representation can occur in WM. It has been argued that manipulation of items in WM is more impaired than simple maintenance in SZ, but direct empirical data to support this claim have been mixed. Discrepant findings among studies might be explained by task parameters, specifically the degree to which the manipulation task places demands on encoding and maintenance processes. The present study set out to examine these components of WM in patients with SZ (n = 20) and demographically matched healthy controls (n = 19) using a spatial delayed response task (DRT) to measure maintenance processes and 2 mental rotation tasks (allocentric and egocentric) with no delay period or restriction on encoding time to measure manipulation processes. Consistent with previous findings, patients were impaired on the spatial DRT. However, patients performed equally well on the egocentric mental rotation task and were more accurate than controls on the allocentric mental rotation task as the required degree of rotation increased. These results indicated impaired maintenance and spared manipulation of representations in WM and suggest a pocket of cognitive function that might be enhanced in SZ.

Effect of degree and direction of rotation in egocentric mental rotation of hand: an event-related potential study

We explored the neural mechanisms of mental rotation of hand, which may invoke a mental transformation of viewer's own hands. It was found that, when a hand picture was presented at an orientation rotated from the upright orientation, participants' performance in making left or right hand judgment was affected by the degree and direction of rotation, with the direction effect being implicated as the evidence for egocentric mental rotation. Our event-related potentials measure supported the idea that amplitude modulation in the parietal cortex is a psychophysiological marker of the mental rotation of hand. Furthermore, the rotation-direction-dependent modulation of a positive wave was identified as possible neural correlate for the egocentric nature of such mental rotation.

The Dissociation of Egocentric and Allocentric Mental Rotation through an In-Rotation Effect

Mental rotation involves the spatial transformation of the mental image of a physical stimulus.The following two mental rotation tasks have been employed in the literature:(1) left-right or normal-mirror judgment task and(2) the same-different judgment task.The time taken in making these judgments as well as the errors made often increase with the angular difference in orientation between the stimuli,or the difference between imagined and normalized orientation. Further,mental rotation can be classified into two categories based on the reference frame adopted: egocentric and allocentric.The stimuli representing bodies or body parts such as hands are often considered as a special class of stimuli;this is because when they are used as stimuli in mental rotation tasks,they tend to induce egocentric mental rotation.However,there is no conclusive evidence demonstrating that material of body parts in fact draws forth egocentric mental rotation;more importantly,there has been no evidence demonstrating that the images of body parts can also elicit allocentric mental rotation. In the current study,using two experimental paradigms(left-right judgment task and same-different judgment task),we explored the possibility of the dissociation of these two processing mechanisms using a special stimulus(hand),which may induce a mental transformation of either the viewer's own body(hand) or the visual display.The stimuli comprised images of the back of the human hands created by a 3D graphics software.Each picture of the hand was presented at an orientation rotated in the medial(in-rotation) or lateral(out-rotation) direction from the upright orientation. In experiment 1,each participant completed a left or right hand judgment task(LR task) when the picture of either a left or right hand was presented.Three factors were manipulated: hands(left hand vs.right hand),the direction of rotation(in-rotation vs.out-rotation),and the magnitude of rotation(45,90, and 135).All possible combinations of the different levels of the hands,direction of rotation,and degree of rotation were tested in a within-subject 2×2×3 completely randomized factorial design.In experiment 2,each participant completed a same or different judgment task(SD task) when the pictures of two hands were presented.In addition to the 3 factors used in experiment 1,there was an additional factor: the match(match vs.no-match).For both experiments,the dependent variables were the reaction time and the errors in the judgment. For both experiments,the results indicated that the degree of rotation did have an effect,i.e.,the performance decreased as the degree of rotation increased.In addition,for the LR task,for the same magnitude of rotation,the hand when rotated medially(in-rotation) was recognized more quickly and accurately than when rotated laterally(out-rotation).Such an effect of the direction of rotation(we termed it the "in-rotation effect") was not seen for the SD task.This suggests that the processing of mental rotation in the LR task was limited by the biomechanical constraints of the corresponding physical rotation.Thus,the subjects might have used the egocentric frame of reference in mental rotation for the LR task but the allocentric frame of reference in the SD task.Therefore,the hand stimuli can elicit either egocentric or allocentric mental rotation depending on the experimental task. These results suggest that participants use different spatial transformation mechanisms in LR(egocentric) and SD(object-centric) tasks.It appears that both the material of the body parts and the paradigms of mental rotation determine the reference frame that the participants adopt;further,we can state that the in-rotation effect might serve as an indicator of the dissociation of egocentric and allocentric mental rotation.Further,the result provided a good method for clarifying the disputation of unitary and multiple-systems models in egocentric and allocentric mental rotation.

Does egocentric mental rotation elicit sex differences?

Mental rotation tests traditionally show a male performance advantage. Some neuroimaging studies have reported sex-specific cortical activation patterns during mental rotation. However, these experiments used abstract stimuli and some studies did not systematically exclude performance as a confounding variable. The mental rotation of hands and hand-related objects, compared to abstract objects, is known to evoke an egocentric motor strategy. In this study, we used fMRI to explore potential gender-specific cortical activation patterns for the mental rotation of hands and tools in a sample with an adequate and equal performance for men and women. We found a common neural substrate for men and women comprising superior parietal lobe, dorsolateral premotor cortex, and extrastriate occipital areas, compatible with an egocentric motor strategy for the mental rotation of hands and tools. Sex differences were modest and limited to the mental rotation of hands. Women recruited more left ventral premotor cortex, which could imply that women rely more on imitation or use more perceptual comparisons. Men, on the other hand, drafted more the lingual gyrus, possibly referring to more extensive semantic or early visual processing. We conclude that men and women use a very similar motor strategy during egocentric mental rotation with a potential gender-specific accent.

Object-based and action-based visual perception in children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus

Children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus (SBH) have long been known to have difficulties with visual perception. We studied how children with SBH perform 12 visual perception tasks requiring object identification, multistable representations of visual space, or visually guided overt actions. Four tasks required object-based processing (visual constancy illusions, face recognition, recognition of fragmented objects, line orientation). Four tasks required the representation of visual space in egocentric coordinates (stereopsis, visual figure-ground identification, perception of multistable figures, egocentric mental rotation). Four tasks required the coupling of visual space to overt movement (visual pursuit, figure drawing, visually guided route finding, visually guided route planning). Effect sizes, measuring the magnitude of the difference between SBH children and controls, were consistently larger for action-based than object-based visual perception tasks. Within action-based tasks, effect sizes were large and roughly comparable for tasks requiring the representation of visual space and for tasks requiring visually guided action. The results are discussed in terms of the physical and brain problems of children with SBH that limit their ability to build effective situation models of space.

Egocentric mental rotation in Hungarian dyslexic children.

A mental rotation task was given to 27 dyslexic children (mean age 9 years, 2 months) and to 28 non-dyslexic children (mean age 8 years, 8 months). Pictures of right and left hands were shown at angles of 0, 50, 90 and 180 degrees, and the subjects were required to indicate whether what was shown was a right hand or a left hand. It was found that, in this task, the dyslexics did not show the normal pattern of response times at different angles, and also, that they made more errors than the controls. It is argued that this result is compatible with hypothesis that, in typical cases of dyslexia, there is a malfunctioning in the posterior parietal area.