Repetition benefit in mental rotation is independent of stimulus repetition

✍ Scribed by Qun Wan; Chuansheng Chen; Chenyang Wu; Xiuying Qian

• Book ID: 111523318
• Publisher: Psychonomic Society Publications
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 233 KB
• Volume: 39
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0090-502X
• DOI: 10.3758/s13421-010-0061-0

✦ Synopsis

In this study, we investigated whether there is a repetition benefit in mental rotation that is independent of stimulus repetition (i.e., due to increased efficiency in postencoding processing). Three experiments were conducted, in which different conditions of stimulus repetition (different letters on consecutive trials in Experiment 1, letters of different orientations on consecutive trials in Experiment 2, and priming of rotation direction in Experiment 3) were used, and the extent of repetition of rotation direction between two consecutive trials was manipulated. The results of all three experiments showed clear evidence of a repetition benefit without repeating the stimulus, suggesting that this effect is independent of stimulus repetition and lending support to the notion of increased efficiency in mental rotation as a result of repeated rotation direction per se.