Image Representation: Researches Of Mental Rotation

Mental rotation is the important part of mental image theory. In 1971,R.N.Shepard & J.Metzler began to research mental rotation. Their study indicated thatmental image was an independent mental process, which related to other mentalprocesses and physiological process. After 1971,there were many issues about thetheory of mental rotation, such as mental image representation and propositionrepresentation, reference frame and physiological mechanism of mental rotation. Thetopic of the study is the same as these issues.There are three parts in the dissertation. Part one introduces the basic theory ofmental image and mental rotation and analyzes the factors effected on mental rotation.The basic study methods and importantant issues are presented in the part. All thesepresentations are helpful to the study.In part two, there are six exploratory researches. In experiment 1,the CRT, EFT,the Attention Test, Russian Continuous Letters Test and Cooper's mental rotation areused to construct equation model. The model shows the relation of intelligence,cognitive style, attention, temperament and mental rotation. In experiment 2, weanalyze the different stimulus how to effect on different mental rotation'efficiency.Eyelinkâ…¡is used in experiment 3 to study the external and internal refence fame inmental rotation. The result is that presenting a number with an external referenceframe, subjects' internal reference frames can be revised. At the same time, thesubjects tend to use frame rotation. In experiment 4, we use the different stylenumbles and Shepard's three-dimensional pictures to study the image representationand proposition representation of mental rotation. We find that a chuck of imagerepresentation. The chuck is 4. When the capacity is less than 4, the imagerepresentation plays an important role in mental rotation's process. But, if thestimulus is very difficult, the capacity will overflow. Then propositionrepresentation will dominat in mental rotation's operation. Eyelink II is used inexperiment 5 to explore eye movements characteristic of mental rotation between deaf students and hearing students. The result is that impaired hearing bringsabout weaker effect in mental rotation. ERPs is used in last experiment to explorethe physiological mechanism of different people. We find that there are significantdifferences between different stimulus and different group on ERP. N200 hassignificant difference between male and female. SLW has significance differencebetween left-handed and right-handed. There are different functions between lefthemisphere and right hemisphere of brain in the course of mental rotation. Femaleuses more left hemisphere than male. Left-handed uses more left hemisphere thanright-handed in mental rotation.