Size does matter: women mentally rotate large objects faster than men

Wide Bezel Televisions Decrease Immersive Experiences

This study explored how telepresence could be affected by stimuli from reality that distracts people while they are watching television. The sample comprised of 36 undergraduate and graduate students from a university in South Korea (age range: 18–38 years, M = 22.61, and SD = 4.12). A between-subjects experimental design was employed with two types of viewing equipment (a television screen vs. a television screen with side screens that act as stimuli from reality) and two bezel widths (2 cm vs. 10 cm) to examine how each condition influenced the viewers’ perceived telepresence. The results revealed that participants’ perception of telepresence was not affected by the type of viewing equipment. However, the level of telepresence was affected by the bezel width: the thinner the bezel, the more telepresence felt by the viewers. These findings provide important insights that can guide the future designs of screen bezels for televisions and other devices in order to more effectively create immersive virtual worlds. Future studies are needed to examine the relationship between central vision and telepresence.

Gender differences in mental rotation strategy depend on degree of autistic traits

Participants with low, medium, and high autistic traits completed a mental rotation task while their eye movements were recorded. Men were more accurate than women (F(1, 102) = 4.36, P = 0.04, η²_p  = 0.04), but there were no group differences in reaction time. In terms of eye movements, all participants tended to rely on top corners of cube figures for most angles of rotation, and bottom corners of cube figures for 0 and 90 degree rotations (duration: F(8, 816) = 21.70, P < 0.001, η²_p  = 0.18; count: F(8, 816) = 24.42, P < 0.001, η²_p  = 0.19) suggesting a shift in strategy with rotation angle. Eye movements to corners of cube figures also varied by autistic traits group and gender (duration: F(4, 204) = 2.44, P = 0.05, η²_p  = 0.05; count: F(4, 204) = 2.47, P = 0.05, η²_p  = 0.05). Participants with low and medium autistic traits tended to rely more often on the top corners, whereas women with high autistic traits relied on both the top and bottom corners and men with high autistic traits relied on all corners equally. These results suggest mental rotation strategies may vary by both gender and autistic traits. Autism Res 2018, 11: 1024-1037. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

LAY SUMMARY

The current study looked at eye movements to assess adults' strategies when mentally rotating three-dimensional cube figures. Adults with varying levels of autistic traits differ in their mental rotation strategies. In addition, gender differences in strategies are observed in adults with the highest level of autistic traits.

Dissociating object-based from egocentric transformations in mental body rotation: effect of stimuli size

The effect of stimuli size on the mental rotation of abstract objects has been extensively investigated, yet its effect on the mental rotation of bodily stimuli remains largely unexplored. Depending on the experimental design, mentally rotating bodily stimuli can elicit object-based transformations, relying mainly on visual processes, or egocentric transformations, which typically involve embodied motor processes. The present study included two mental body rotation tasks requiring either a same-different or a laterality judgment, designed to elicit object-based or egocentric transformations, respectively. Our findings revealed shorter response times for large-sized stimuli than for small-sized stimuli only for greater angular disparities, suggesting that the more unfamiliar the orientations of the bodily stimuli, the more stimuli size affected mental processing. Importantly, when comparing size transformation times, results revealed different patterns of size transformation times as a function of angular disparity between object-based and egocentric transformations. This indicates that mental size transformation and mental rotation proceed differently depending on the mental rotation strategy used. These findings are discussed with respect to the different spatial manipulations involved during object-based and egocentric transformations.