Abstract
We present evidence that different mental spatial transformations are used to reason about three different types of items representing a spectrum of animacy: human bodies, nonhuman animals, and inanimate objects. Participants made two different judgments about rotated figures: handedness judgments (“Is this the left or right side?”) and matching judgments (“Are these figures the same?”). Perspective-taking strategies were most prevalent when participants made handedness judgments about human bodies and animals. In contrast, participants generally did not imagine changes in perspective to perform matching judgments. Such results suggest that high-level information about semantic categories, including information about a thing’s animacy, can influence how spatial representations are transformed when performing online problem solving. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://mc.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Amorim, M.-A., Isableu, B., & Jarraya, M. (2006). Embodied spatial transformations: “Body analogy” for the mental rotation of objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 135, 327–347. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.135.3.327
Bryant, D. J., Tversky, B., & Franklin, N. (1992). Internal and external spatial frameworks for representing described scenes. Journal of Memory & Language, 31, 74–98. doi:10.1016/0749-596X(92)90006-J
Cohen, J., MacWhinney, B., Flatt, M., & Provost, J. (1993). Psy Scope: An interactive graphic system for designing and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computers. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 25, 257–271.
Decety, J., & Grèzes, J. (2006). The power of simulation: Imagining one’s own and other’s behavior. Brain Research, 1079, 4–14. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2005.12.115
Downing, P. E., Jiang, Y., Shuman, M., & Kanwisher, N. (2001). A cortical area selective for visual processing of the human body. Science, 293, 2470–2473. doi:10.1126/science.1063414
Dunlap, K. (1912). Discussion: The case against introspection. Psychological Review, 19, 404–413. doi:10.1037/h0071571
Emmorey, K., Tversky, B., & Taylor, H. A. (2000). Using space to describe space: Perspective in speech, sign, and gesture. Journal of Spatial Cognition & Computation, 2, 157–180. doi:10.1023/ A:1013118114571
Flavell, J. H., Flavell, E. R., Green, F. L., & Wilcox, S. A. (1981). The development of three spatial perspective-taking rules. Child Development, 52, 356–358. doi:10.2307/1129250
Ganis, G., Keenan, J. P., Kosslyn, S. M., & Pascual-Leone, A. (2000). Transcranial magnetic stimulation of primary motor cortex affects mental rotation. Cerebral Cortex, 10, 175–180. doi:10.1093/ cercor/10.2.175
Hare, B., & Tomasello, M. (2005). Human-like social skills in dogs? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 439–444. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.07.003
Harris, I. M., & Miniussi, C. (2003). Parietal lobe contribution to mental rotation demonstrated with rTMS. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 315–323. doi:10.1162/089892903321593054
Heptulla-Chatterjee, S., Freyd, J. J., & Shiffrar, M. (1996). Configural processing in the perception of apparent biological motion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 22, 916–929. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.22.4.916
Huttenlocher, J., & Presson, C. C. (1973). Mental rotation and the perspective problem. Cognitive Psychology, 4, 277–299. doi:10.1016/ 0010-0285(73)90015-7
Kosslyn, S. M. (1980). Image and mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kozhevnikov, M., Motes, M. A., Rasch, B., & Blajenkova, O. (2006). Perspective-taking vs. mental rotation transformations and how they predict spatial navigation performance. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20, 397–417. doi:10.1002/acp.1192
Linde, C., & Labov, W. (1975). Spatial networks as a site for the study of language and thought. Language, 51, 924–939.
McCloskey, M. (2001). Spatial representation in mind and brain. In B. Rapp (Ed.), The handbook of cognitive neuropsychology: What deficits reveal about the human mind (pp. 101–132). Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Michelon, P., & Zacks, J. M. (2006). Two kinds of visual perspective taking. Perception & Psychophysics, 68, 327–337.
Parise, S., Kiesler, S., Sproull, L., & Waters, K. (1999). Cooperating with life-like interface agents. Computers in Human Behavior, 15, 123–142. doi:10.1016/S0747-5632(98)00035-1
Parsons, L. M. (1987). Imagined spatial transformation of one’s body. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 116, 172–191. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.116.2.172
Piaget, J., & Inhelder, B. (1956). The child’s conception of space. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Presson, C. C. (1982). Strategies in spatial reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 8, 243–251. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.8.3.243
Pylyshyn, Z. W. (2002). Mental imagery: In search of a theory. Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 25, 157–238. doi:10.1017/S0140525X02000043
Pylyshyn, Z. [W.] (2003). Return of the mental image: Are there really pictures in the brain? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 113–118. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00003-2
Schober, M. F. (1993). Spatial perspective-taking in conversation. Cognition, 47, 1–24. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(93)90060-9
Shepard, R. N. (1988). The role of transformations in spatial cognition. In J. Stiles-Davis, M. Kritchevsky, & U. Bellugi (Eds.), Spatial cognition: Brain bases and development (pp. 81–110). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Shepard, R. N., & Cooper, L. A. (1982). Mental images and their transformations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Shepard, R. N., & Metzler, J. (1971). Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects. Science, 171, 701–703. doi:10.1126/science.171.3972.701
Traxler, M. J., & Gernsbacher, M. A. (1993). Improving written communication through perspective-taking. Language & Cognitive Processes, 8, 311–334. doi:10.1080/01690969308406958
Tversky, B., Lee, P., & Mainwaring, S. (1999). Why do speakers mix perspectives? Spatial Cognition & Computation, 1, 399–412. doi:10.1023/A:1010091730257
Urgesi, C., Berlucchi, G., & Aglioti, S. M. (2004). Magnetic stimulation of extrastriate body area impairs visual processing of nonfacial body parts. Current Biology, 14, 2130–2134. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2004.11.031
Vogeley, K., May, M., Ritzl, A., Falkai, P., Zilles, K., & Fink, G. R. (2004). Neural correlates of first-person perspective as one constituent of human self-consciousness. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16, 817–827. doi:10.1162/089892904970799
Wraga, M., Creem, S. H., & Proffitt, D. R. (2000). Updating displays after imagined object and viewer rotations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, 26, 151–168. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.26.1.151
Zacks, J. M. (2008). Neuroimaging studies of mental rotation: A meta-analysis and review. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 1–19. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.20013
Zacks, J. M., Gilliam, F., & Ojemann, J. G. (2003). Selective disturbance of mental rotation by cortical stimulation. Neuropsychologia, 41, 1659–1667. doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(03)00099-X
Zacks, J. M., & Michelon, P. (2005). Transformations of visuospatial images. Behavioral & Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 4, 96–118. doi:10.1177/1534582305281085
Zacks, J. M., Mires, J., Tversky, B., & Hazeltine, E. (2000). Mental spatial transformations of objects and perspective. Spatial Cognition & Computation, 2, 315–332. doi:10.1023/A:1015584100204
Zacks, J. M., Ollinger, J. M., Sheridan, M. A., & Tversky, B. (2002). A parametric study of mental spatial transformations of bodies. Neuro Image, 16, 857–872. doi:10.1006/nimg.2002.1129
Zacks, J. M., Rypma, B., Gabrieli, J. D. E., Tversky, B., & Glover, G. H. (1999). Imagined transformations of bodies: An fMRI in vestigation. Neuropsychologia, 37, 1029–1040. doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(99)00012-3
Zacks, J. M., & Tversky, B. (2005). Multiple systems for spatial imagery: Transformations of objects and bodies. Spatial Cognition & Computation, 5, 271–306. doi:10.1207/s15427633scc0504_1
Zacks, J. M., Vettel, J. M., & Michelon, P. (2003). Imagined viewer and object rotations dissociated with event-related fMRI. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15, 1002–1018. doi:10.1162/ 089892903770007399
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and Laura D’Andrea for her assistance in experiment preparation and data collection. A.B.Y. was supported by a Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation (SMART) scholarship awarded by the United States Department of Defense.
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yu, A.B., Zacks, J.M. The role of animacy in spatial transformations. Memory & Cognition 38, 982–993 (2010). https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.38.7.982
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.38.7.982