Mental rotation of mirrored letters: evidence from event-related brain potentials

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants (n=13) were presented with mirrored and normal letters at different orientations and were asked to make mirror-normal letter discriminations. As it has been suggested that a mental rotation out of the plane might be necessary to decide on mirrored letters, we wanted to determine whether this rotation occurs after the plane rotation in mirror rotated letters. The results showed that mirrored letters in the upright position elicited a negative-going waveform over the right hemisphere in the 400-500 ms window. A similar negativity was also present in mirrored letters at 30 degrees, 60 degrees, and 90 degrees, but in these cases it was delayed. Moreover, the well-known orientation effect on the amplitude of the rotation-related negativity was also found, although it was more evident for normal than for mirrored letters. These results indicate that the processing of mirrored letters differs from that of normal letters, and suggest that a rotation out of the plane after the plane rotation may be involved in the processing of mirror rotated letters.