Is mental folding a series of mental rotations?

Le résumé fourni par la source

Mental spatial transformations such as rotation and folding have been well-characterised both behaviorally and electrophysiologically. However, the parity of mental rotation and mental folding mechanisms is an unresolved question. The neurophysiological signature of mental rotation is a late negative deflection over parietal regions that becomes more negative with greater rotation angles. The same negativity is present during mental folding, but typically does not change in amplitude with different folding difficulties. This dissociation suggests that the two processes may rely on separate mechanisms, or it could occur due to typical mental folding experiments utilising stimuli for which each fold involves a fixed 90° transformation angle . The aim of this study is to test the latter explanation. If varying the angle of folding required coincides with changes to the magnitude of the folding-related parietal negativity, mental folding can be viewed as a series of rotations for the component parts of an object. Participants will mentally fold a cube net to completion to decide whether two points on the net will meet. In a 2x2 design, the cube nets will require different numbers of folding (4 faces carried vs 6 faces carried), and the folds will require different degrees of rotation to complete (50° vs 90°). Electroencephalography data will be analysed to determine the presence of a transformation negativity over parietal leads between 400-800 ms. Greater negativity in this component for larger degrees of folding angle will be taken as evidence for a shared mechanism between mental folding and mental rotation.

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