Cohen, D. J., & Blair, C. (1998).
Mental rotation and temporal contingencies.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior,
70, 203-214.
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.
Key words: private event, temporal contingencies, mental
rotation, reaction time, humans