Imaginal perspective switches in remembered environments: Transformation versus interference accounts

• Published in: Cognitive psychology Vol. 48; no. 2; pp. 163 - 206
• Main Author: May, Mark
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Inc 01.03.2004; Elsevier; Academic Press
• Subjects: Adult; Analysis of Variance; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Cognition & reasoning; Cognitive Processes; Cognitive transformation; Conditioning; Error Patterns; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Hypothesis Testing; Imagination; Learning. Memory; Male; Memory; Motor Reactions; Object localization; Orientation; Perception; Perceptual Motor Learning; Perspective change; Psychological Theory; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychomotor Performance; Reaction Time; Recognition (Psychology); Response selection conflict; Rotation; Space Perception; Spatial Ability; Spatial interference effects; Spatial memory; Response selection conflict; Cognitive transformation; Spatial interference effects; Object localization; Perspective change; Spatial memory; Human; Mental imagery; Stimulus localization; Interference; Cognition; Perspective taking; Experimental study
• ISSN: 0010-0285; 1095-5623
• DOI: 10.1016/S0010-0285(03)00127-0

Imaginal perspective switches are often considered to be difficult, because they call for additional cognitive transformations of object coordinates (transformation hypothesis). Recent research suggests that problems can also result from conflicts between incompatible sensorimotor and cognitive object location codes during response specification and selection (interference hypothesis). Three experiments tested contrasting predictions of both accounts. Volunteers had to point to unseen object locations after imagined self-rotations and self-translations. Results revealed larger pointing latencies and errors for rotations as compared to translations, and monotic latency and error increases for both tasks as a function of the disparity of object directions between real and imagined perspective. Provision of advance information about the to-be-imagined perspective left both effects unchanged. These results, together with those from a systematic error analysis, deliver clear support for an interference account of imaginal perspective switches in remembered surroundings.