Spatial perspective taking mediated by whole-body motor simulation.

Abstract

Humans can envision the world from other people's viewpoints. To explore the embodied process of such spatial perspective taking, we examined whether action related to a whole-body movement modulates performance on spatial perspective-taking tasks. Results showed that when participants responded by putting their left/right foot or left/right hand forward, actions congruent with a movement's direction (clockwise/counterclockwise) reduced RTs relative to incongruent actions. In contrast, actions irrelevant to a movement (a left/right hand index-finger response) did not affect performance. Furthermore, we demonstrated that this response congruency effect cannot be explained by either spatial stimulus-response compatibility or sensorimotor interference. These results support the involvement of simulated whole-body movement in spatial perspective taking. Moreover, the findings revealed faster foot responses than hand responses during spatial perspective taking, whereas the opposite result was obtained during a simple orientation judgment task without spatial perspective taking. Overall, our findings highlight the important role of motor simulation in spatial perspective taking. (PsycINFO Database Record

Human-body analogy improves mental rotation performance in people aged 86 to 97 years

“…Transformations of visuospatial images are important spatial abilities that play roles in a wide range of everyday activities, including tool use 2 , navigation 3,4 , social interactions [5][6][7] , and academic and occupational success [8][9][10] . Further, it is well known that mental transformations of visuospatial images are at least partially subserved by sensorimotor processes necessary for corresponding physical transformations [11][12][13][14][15][16] , consistent with embodied cognition theories 17,18 .…”

Mental rotation of cubes with a snake face: The role of the human-body analogy revisited

“…Mental spatial transformations such as mental rotation (Shepard & Metzler, 1971) are closely linked to sensorimotor processing or embodied (e.g., Gardony, Taylor, & Brunyé, 2014;Muto, Matsushita, & Morikawa, 2018;Sekiyama, 1982;Wexler, Kosslyn, & Berthoz, 1998;Wohlschläger & Wohlschläger, 1998; for a review, Zacks & Michelon, 2005). Within a framework of embodied cognition, previous research has demonstrated repeatedly that the mental rotation of objects resembling human bodies was performed more quickly and with less errors than the mental rotation of abstract objects (a body analogy effect) using computer-based chronometric tasks (Amorim, Isableu, & Jarraya, 2006;Jansen, Lehmann, & Van Doren, 2012;Krüger, Amorim, & Ebersbach, 2014;Makinae & Kasai, 2017;Makinae, Yamazaki, & Kasai, 2015;Sayeki, 1981;Voyer & Jansen, 2016); moreover, similar effects were observed in studies using paper-and-pencil psychometric tests (e.g., Alexander & Evardone, 2008;Doyle & Voyer, 2018).…”

Effect of task complexity on ipsilateral motor response programming to physically presented and imagined stimuli

“…However, when participants proactively self-generate the response movement, initiation of the movement differed with foot movements occurring before finger movements. Pfister et al (2014) confirmed that finger responses initiate before foot movements due to shorter nerve conduction to the hand than foot, whereas other researchers have identified foot movements occurred before finger movements when self-determining the direction of motor simulation tasks (e.g., Brunia & Van den Bosch, 1984; Muto et al, 2018). Using these established different ipsilateral behavioural response patterns to unpredictable and self-generated tasks, it is possible to investigate the mental representation of imagery.…”