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Cross‐modal facilitation of mental rotation: Effects of modality and complexity
Author(s) -
Aksentijevic Aleksandar,
Garcia Laura M.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.2012.02111.x
Subject(s) - facilitation , psychology , modality (human–computer interaction) , mental rotation , modal , cognitive psychology , cognition , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , computer science , chemistry , polymer chemistry
Performance in a visual mental rotation (MR) task has been reported to predict the ability to recognize retrograde‐transformed melodies. The current study investigated the effects of melodic structure on the MR of sequentially presented visual patterns. Each trial consisted of a five‐segment sequentially presented visual pattern (standard) followed by a five‐tone melody that was either identical in structure to the standard or its retrograde. A visual target pattern was either the rotated version of the standard or unrelated to it. The task was to indicate whether the target pattern was a rotated version of the standard or not. Periodic patterns were not rotated but melodies facilitated the rotation of non‐periodic patterns. For these, rotation latency was determined by a quantitative index of complexity (number of runs). This study provides the first experimental confirmation for cross‐modal facilitation of MR.