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The Menstrual Cycle
Published in Jane M. Ussher, Joan C. Chrisler, Janette Perz, Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2019
Joan C. Chrisler, Jenifer A. Gorman
There have been many methodological improvements in performance studies over the years. The most recent research about the menstrual cycle and cognitive functioning has been conducted by neuroscientists who use advanced methods for steroid hormone analyses across the cycle. Sundstrom-Poromaa and Gingnell (2014, p. 1) conducted a review of “methodologically sound menstrual cycle studies” of cognitive functioning and emotion processing in healthy women. They reported mixed results in studies of mental rotation, visuospatial tasks, verbal skills, memory, and emotion processing, and concluded that differences across the menstrual cycle in mental rotation, verbal fluency, memory, and visuospatial ability are “small and difficult to replicate” (p. 12). Thus, there is no conclusive evidence that the work and cognitive performance of healthy women (without any cycle-related medical conditions) is significantly or detrimentally impaired during any phase of the cycle.
Sexual Differentiation of Spatial Functions in Humans
Published in Akira Matsumoto, Sexual Differentiation of the Brain, 2017
Spatial abilities evolved to enable our hominid ancestors to solve spatial problems in the natural environment. Today, they are typically assessed in the laboratory setting using a variety of psychometric tests or synthetic problems. An example item from a test of spatial ability is shown in Figure 15.1. The type of function assessed in this case is called “mental rotation” or “spatial orientation.” Factor analytic studies of mental test batteries have long identified spatial orientation as a separable form of spatial ability. In everyday life, mental rotation is required in many mechanical or building-related activities and is involved in recognizing one’s surroundings from different vantage points. Mental rotation tests are widely used to assess spatial ability in human research and reliably elicit a male advantage. The size of the sex difference varies, but on mental rotation tests with a high degree of difficulty, average scores for men and women differ by as much as one full standard deviation.
Laterality Effects for Higher Cognitive Processes
Published in Robert Miller, Axonal Conduction Time and Human Cerebral Laterality, 2019
Apart from this there are a number of papers from the “imagery” literature which demonstrate a left hemisphere superiority for active construction and manipulation of visual images. Farah (1984) asked brain-injured subjects a series of questions involving imagery (for instance: “What is the colour of the stars on the American flag?”) Patients with left posterior lesions were most impaired on such a task, although with simpler questions (e.g. “What is the colour of the sky?”) they were not impaired. In another study (Farah et al., 1985), using a commissurotomy subject, tasks were devised using letters which involved imagery (e.g. envisaging the features of a lower case letter, given its upper case equivalent), with simple perceptual discrimination based on the same features serving as a control. The left hemisphere was clearly superior in the tasks involving imagery, while the right hemisphere performed at chance levels. A more thorough study, involving a large number of imagery tasks, with two split-brain subjects (Kosslyn et al., 1985) concluded that the left hemisphere but not the right one is capable of constructing and inspecting an image made up of several parts, while the right hemisphere can construct and inspect only simple images. A recent addition to this line of research is from Cook et al. (1994), employing the task of assessing whether two geometrical figures are the same, but at different orientations, or are different. This task involves mental construction and mental rotation of an image. In normal subjects it is carried out better with the right fields (left hemisphere). In addition when two geometrical figures were presented for comparison, one to each field, and one of these had a fixed position, while the other was “gravitationally unstable”, the comparison could be made more quickly if the mobile figure was directed to the left hemisphere. It was again concluded that the left hemisphere can manipulate images, whereas the right hemisphere is better for forming a static “reference” image.
Embodied Mental Rotation – Does It Affect Postural Stability?
Published in Journal of Motor Behavior, 2023
Philipp Hofmann, Leonardo Jost, Petra Jansen
Mental rotation refers to the ability to imagine an object rotated in the mind (Shepard & Metzler, 1971). There are two types of mental rotation tasks: object-based and egocentric tasks (Zacks et al., 2000). An object-based mental rotation task is represented by presenting two stimuli on a screen, where the right stimulus is a rotated or mirrored version of the left stimulus. Participants must decide whether both items are rotated, or in other words, are "the same" or mirrored, which means that they are "different." In an egocentric task, a common variation is that a human figure, raising one arm, is rotated. The participant must decide whether the right or the left arm is raised. One of the main differences between these two types of mental rotation tasks is that in an object-based task, the subject’s position about the environment remains unchanged, and only the stimulus is mentally rotated. In contrast, participants change their perspective and imagine rotating themselves to solve the egocentric task. Accordingly, egocentric transformations cause a simulative rotation process of one’s body (Kessler & Rutherford, 2010).
Dyslexia and dyscalculia are characterized by common visual perception deficits
Published in Developmental Neuropsychology, 2018
Dazhi Cheng, Qing Xiao, Qian Chen, Jiaxin Cui, Xinlin Zhou
The mental rotation task used in this study was adapted from a previously described task (Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978). In each trial, a three-dimensional image was presented on the upper part of the screen and two more images were presented on the lower part of the screen. Participants were asked to choose the image from the lower part of the screen that matched the image on the upper part of the screen; the matching image could only be identified by mental rotation. The nonmatching image was a rotated mirror image of the target. The rotation angles of the matching images ranged from 15° to 345° (intervals of 15°). Participants pressed the “Q” key to choose the image on the left and the “P” key to choose the image on the right. Stimuli remained on the screen until participant responded by pressing the “P” key or the “Q” key. This task consisted of 180 trials and was a time-limited (3-min) test.
The Relationship among Cognition, Psychological Well-being, Physical Activity and Demographic Data in People over 80 Years of Age
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2019
Mental rotation is the ability to rotate 2D or 3D objects in one’s mind. The mental task applied here was used in primary school children; 16 mental rotation tasks are presented on four A4-sized sheets of paper, using 2D pictures of animals. Each task consists of five items, one “standard” item on the right, and four “rotated” items on the left. Two rotated items are identical, and two are mirrored versions of the standard items. The participant is instructed to identify both identical items. There is a time limit of two minutes for the task. Whereas in the standard version of the test a point was given if two items were solved correctly, we counted the whole number of correctly identified items due to the difficulty of solving the test for older people.