Comparing viewer and array mental rotations in different planes

Differential effects of object orientation on imaginary object /viewer transformations

“…Recently, Proffitt and colleagues have performed an impressive series of studies to further investigate the differences between imagined viewer and object rotations. Their studies (Carpenter & Proffitt, 2001;Creem et al, 2001;Wraga et al, 2000) basically confirm the notion that participants perform better on imagined viewer rotations than on imagined object rotations. In their experiments, which were based on variations of an experimental paradigm used by Presson and collaborators (Huttenlocher & Presson, 1979;Presson, 1982), the participants faced life-size arrays of objects.…”

“…Wraga et al (2000) restricted themselves to viewer rotations in the transverse plane (in which the viewer remained upright). Apparently, if other viewer rotations are performed, this viewer advantage may disappear (Carpenter & Proffitt, 2001), or may even turn into a severe disadvantage,as has been shown here. Now, just as the rotation of large object arrays may be established in a rather piecemeal way, it may well be that the viewer rotation becomes less cohesive and more piecemeal for upside-down rotations.…”

“…Indeed they found some improvement on imagined object rotation when they used highly familiar objects or when participants could use haptic information; but generally, the imagined viewer rotation advantage persisted. Wraga et al's (2000) suggestion that this viewer advantage has ecological plausibility because most observers will have more experience with motion in a static environment has been strengthened further by Carpenter and Proffitt (2001), who showed a strong influence of the plane in which the rotation had to be established. Most noticeably, the viewer advantage disappeared when the rotation had to be performed not in the familiar horizontal plane, but in planes orthogonal to that plane.…”

“…Given these two ways of achieving different views of an object in the real world, other studies have focused on differences between imaginary object transformations and imaginary viewer transformations (Amorim & Stucchi, 1997;Carpenter & Proffitt, 2001;Creem, Wraga, & Proffitt, 2001;Huttenlocher & Presson, 1979;Presson, 1982;Wraga, Creem, & Proffitt, 1999, 2000. On the whole, such imagery studies have revealed that observers perform better when imaginary viewer transformations are requested.…”

Egocentric and object-based transformations in the laterality judgement of human and animal faces and of non-corporeal objects

“…Notably when egocentric imagers had to judge 0 • tilted stimuli, they performed an imagery rotation of their own body around the stimulus, insofar that they described the mental activity as a kind of "dressing the mask" of the actual stimulus that is a rotation around the z-axis in the ground plane [5]. Indeed, based on responses to the questionnaires the differences found between the two groups (described below) were due to the fact that, in contrast with the object-based transformation, the egocentric transformation did not involve mental rotation, regardless to the presented stimulus.…”