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Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to explore Kosslyn's (1995)
claim that the left hemisphere is specialized for the computation
of categorical spatial relations and that the right hemisphere is
specialized for the computation of coordinate spatial relations.
Categorical representations involve judgments about the relative
position of the components of a visual stimulus. Coordinate
representations involve computing specific metric distances between
the components of a visual stimulus. Kosslyn's (1995) paradigm used
different stimuli for the categorical and coordinate tasks, thus
varying both task and stimuli across conditions. The present study
maintained the same visual stimuli for both conditions. Forty
participants were administered the categorical or the coordinate
task. The participants were to mentally form images of a visual
array. Then, for the categorical task they determined the relative
position of a component (1st,2nd,3rd,) and for the coordinate task
they computed the distance between adjacent components (more, less,
1cm). The stimuli were presented to the right visual field-left
hemisphere (RVF-LH), the left visual field-right hemisphere
(LVF-RH), or centrally (CVF). Overall, the results suggest a LVF-RH
advantage for both tasks. However, consistent with Kosslyn (1995),
the magnitude of the LVF-RH advantage was greater for the
coordinate task.
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