Abstract
A task that requires subjects to determine whether two forms of the same shape, but in different orientations, are mirror images or identical except for orientation is called a handedness recognition task. Subjects' reaction times (RT) on this task are consistently related to the angular disparity (termed alpha) between the two presented forms. This pattern of data has been interpreted to indicate that subjects solve the task by imagining that one of the forms rotates into the orientation of the other (termed mental rotation). The speed with which one imagines one of the forms rotating has been widely considered a fixed capability of the individual, and thus immune to the effect of contingencies. We present an experiment that assesses the effects of temporal contingencies in a handedness recognition task on the slope of the function RT = f(alpha). The data indicate that the slope of this function can come under the control of temporal contingencies.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (153.8 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Baron A., Menich S. R., Perone M. Reaction times of younger and older men and temporal contingencies of reinforcement. J Exp Anal Behav. 1983 Nov;40(3):275–287. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1983.40-275. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Baron A., Menich S. R. Reaction times of younger and older men: effects of compound samples and a prechoice signal on delayed matching-to-sample performances. J Exp Anal Behav. 1985 Jul;44(1):1–14. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1985.44-1. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Blough D. S. Effects of stimulus frequency and reinforcement variables on reaction time. J Exp Anal Behav. 1992 Jan;57(1):47–50. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1992.57-47. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Cohen D., Kubovy M. Mental rotation, mental representation, and flat slopes. Cogn Psychol. 1993 Jul;25(3):351–382. doi: 10.1006/cogp.1993.1009. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Corballis M. C. Recognition of disoriented shapes. Psychol Rev. 1988 Jan;95(1):115–123. doi: 10.1037/0033-295x.95.1.115. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Corballis M. C., Zbrodoff N. J., Shetzer L. I., Butler P. B. Decisions about identity and orientation of rotated letters and digits. Mem Cognit. 1978 Mar;6(2):98–107. doi: 10.3758/bf03197434. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Galbicka G., Platt J. R. Response-reinforcer contingency and spatially defined operants: testing an invariance property of phi. J Exp Anal Behav. 1989 Jan;51(1):145–162. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1989.51-145. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Shepard R. N., Metzler J. Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects. Science. 1971 Feb 19;171(3972):701–703. doi: 10.1126/science.171.3972.701. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Takano Y. Perception of rotated forms: a theory of information types. Cogn Psychol. 1989 Jan;21(1):1–59. doi: 10.1016/0010-0285(89)90002-9. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Ullman S. Aligning pictorial descriptions: an approach to object recognition. Cognition. 1989 Aug;32(3):193–254. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(89)90036-x. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]