| The study of mental rotation plays an important role in the mental image theory. The classical studies of mental rotation showed that the reaction time of judge the pair of three-dimensional cube-as-semblies figures as being identical or not with the angular disparity between the two figures increasing, or that reaction time of determining whether the single alphanumeric stimulus was shown in a normal or mirror-image position increased with the angular disparity between the stimulus and its standing sample increasing. The result of study into mental rotation supported the Imaginal representation as a special representation effectively. The mental rotation tests were used widely in fields of clinical medicine, personnel assessment and so on as tools to diagnosing human beings' spatial abilities. But many different opinions in processing mechanism of performing mental rotation task exist. The main cause of different opinions existing is that many experimental studies were carried out under the conventional Reaction Time (RT) procedure, which cause the results of studies affected by the speed-accuracy trade-off and made the researchers unable to know processing dynamics of operating mental rotation. So the researcher couldn't interpret the processing mechanism of operating mental rotation clearly and fully. Fortunately the speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) procedure can get over the disadvantage of conventional RT procedure by measuring the rate and discriminability of information processing conjointly. In this study, the processing mechanism of operating mental rotation would be probed into by using SAT procedure.Otherwise, some neuropsychological researches indicated that task specificity or stimulus specificity could make effect on the activation of human beings' brains when they performed mental rotation task. For example, when mental rotation task of alphanumeric characters and mental rotation task of paired figures were performed, different areas of the brain would be activated. Because the brain is biological foundation of mental processing, so we speculated that the task specificity wouldaffect the processing dynamics of operating mental rotation. In this basic study, the processing mechanism of performing mental rotation tasks of alphanumeric characters and paired figures had been researched into under the SAT procedure, which was hoped to give the helpful reference to application and research of mental rotation tasks.The general hypothesis of the study was that under the SAT procedure if the valueof meaning the processing time increases with the angular disparityincreasing, process of operating mental rotation is based on imaginal representation (analog representation). The general hypothesis is the foundation of all the hypotheses in the study. In the condition that general hypothesis had been proved,trend of increasing was analyzed in order to interpret the processingmechanism clearly and fully.The result of this study proved that the processes of performing alphanumeric characters and paired figures mental rotation tasks were both based on imaginal representation, but including other kind of representation. And there are differences in the processes of performing these two kinds of mental rotation tasks. There are three conclusions drawn out in this study. First, the process of operating alphanumeric characters mental rotation task is based on imaginal representation, and the angular disparity smaller (especially less than 60) the probability of using reference frame is higher. Second, the processes of plane paired figures mental rotation and solid paired figures mental rotation are very similar, and both based on imaginal representation. But when the angular disparity increases, propositional representation takes part in the information processing, and the proportion of propositional representation get higher. Finally, similarity between the processes of performing alphanumeric characters mental rotation task and paired figures mental rotation task...
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