Investigating the orientation effect on the water-level task: Who? When? and Why?

Abstract

Psychological Methods will be devoted to the development and dissemination of methods for collecting, understanding, and interpreting psychological data. Its purpose is the dissemination of innovations in research design, measurement, methodology, and statistical analysis to the psychological community; its further purpose is to promote effective communication about related substantive and methodological issues. The audience is diverse and includes those who develop new procedures, those who are responsible for undergraduate and graduate training in design, measurement, and statistics, as well as those who employ those procedures in research. The journal solicits original theoretical, quantitative empirical, and methodological articles; reviews of important methodological issues; tutorials; articles illustrating innovative applications of new procedures to psychological problems; articles on the teaching of quantitative methods; and reviews of statistical software. Submissions should illustrate through concrete example how the procedures described or developed can enhance the quality of psychological research. The journal welcomes submissions that show the relevance to psychology of procedures developed in other fields. Empirical and theoretical articles on specific tests or test construction should have a broad thrust; otherwise, they may be more appropriate for Psychological Assessment.

External Cue Effects on Memory for Spatial Location within a Rotated Task Field

“…Consistent with the literature on mental rotation (Harris et al, 2000;Shepard & Metzler, 1971;Silberstein, Danieli, & Nunez, 2003;Vasta, Belongia, & Ribble, 1994), our study supported the finding that degree of rotation increased the cognitive demands of the test. As rotation increased, the location's coordinates were less exactly remembered, leading to greater error and bias.…”

“…Several of our hypotheses are predicated on the idea that mentally rotating the target location to correspond to the rotated cue locations is mentally taxing. The literature on mental rotation experiments supports this assertion, indicating that mental rotation is associated with an angle dependent increase in the demands placed on working memory (Harris et al, 2000;Shepard & Metzler, 1971;Silberstein, Danieli, & Nunez, 2003, Vasta, Belongia, & Ribble, 1994. It follows that degree of rotation should increase the cognitive cost of encoding, resulting in the location's coordinates being less exactly remembered and hence increases in error and bias.…”

Can Spatial Training Erase the Gender Differences on the Water-Level Task?

“…The design of the new training procedures grew out of several previous findings from research with college students on the water-level task. One VASfA, KNOTT, A N D GAZE was that males, and to a lesser degree females, appear to benefit from experience with water-level trials that are easierthat is, involve containers tilted at smaller angles (Vasta, Belongia, & Ribble, 1994, Experiments 1-3). Research participants who first completed such trials subsequently were more accurate on containers tilted at larger angles than were participants who completed an equal number of the latter trials only.…”

Imagery and Perceptual Basis of Matching Tasks in Young Children

“…As the angle of the bottle increases, performance on the Water Level Task declines (Barna & O'Connell, 1967;Morris, 1971;Vasta, Lightfoot, & Cox, 1993;Vasta, Belongia, & Ribble, 1994), so the rotation of the bottle affects performance (McAfee & Proffitt, 1991). Then Vasta, et al (1994) examined what the orientation effect of the Water Level Task might be if the orientation effect does not result from spatial perception. Then Vasta, et al (1994) examined what the orientation effect of the Water Level Task might be if the orientation effect does not result from spatial perception.…”

“…It was suggested that mental rotation plays a role in the Water Level Task (Signorella & Jamison, 1978;Kalichman, 1988;Otani & Leonard, 1988). Then Vasta, et al (1994) examined what the orientation effect of the Water Level Task might be if the orientation effect does not result from spatial perception. They suggested perhaps participants mentally rotate the container from its initial position to test orientation and considered the orientation effect to be a result of the greater mental rotation required by larger angles.…”