Mental rotation and temporal contingencies
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Updated: Oct 28, 2026

Three-Dimensional Mapping of the Rotation of Interactive Virtual Objects with Eye-Tracking Data
Published on: October 18, 2024
1Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Wilmington 28403-3297, USA. cohend@uncwil.edu
Abstract:
A task that requires subjects to determine whether two forms of the same shape, but in different orientations, are mirror images or identical except for orientation is called a handedness recognition task. Subjects' reaction times (RT) on this task are consistently related to the angular disparity (termed alpha) between the two presented forms. This pattern of data has been interpreted to indicate that subjects solve the task by imagining that one of the forms rotates into the orientation of the other (termed mental rotation). The speed with which one imagines one of the forms rotating has been widely considered a fixed capability of the individual, and thus immune to the effect of contingencies. We present an experiment that assesses the effects of temporal contingencies in a handedness recognition task on the slope of the function RT = f(alpha). The data indicate that the slope of this function can come under the control of temporal contingencies.
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