Individual differences in spatial relation processing: Effects of strategy, ability, and gender

Abstract

Numerous studies have focused on the distinction between categorical and coordinate spatial relations. Categorical relations are propositional and abstract, and often related to a left hemisphere advantage. Coordinate relations specify the metric information of the relative locations of objects, and can be linked to right hemisphere processing. Yet, not all studies have reported such a clear double dissociation; in particular the categorical left hemisphere advantage is not always reported. In the current study we investigated whether verbal and spatial strategies, verbal and spatial cognitive abilities, and gender could account for the discrepancies observed in hemispheric lateralization of spatial relations. Seventy-five participants performed two visual half field, match-to-sample tasks (Van der Ham et al., 2007; 2009) to study the lateralization of categorical and coordinate relation processing. For each participant we determined the strategy they used in each of the two tasks. Consistent with previous findings, we found an overall categorical left hemisphere advantage and coordinate right hemisphere advantage. The lateralization pattern was affected selectively by the degree to which participants used a spatial strategy and by none of the other variables (i.e., verbal strategy, cognitive abilities, and gender). Critically, the categorical left hemisphere advantage was observed only for participants that relied strongly on a spatial strategy. This result is another piece of evidence that categorical spatial relation processing relies on spatial and not verbal processes.

Reproducibility of visual-field asymmetries: Nine replication studies investigating lateralization of visual information processing

“…Gilbert et al, 2006), Shape Oddball Task (SOT) (A.L. Gilbert et al, 2008), Cross-dot Matching Task (CMT) (Van der Ham & Borst, 2011, Landmark Task (LT) (Linnell et al, 2014), and Lexical Decision Task (LDT) (Willemin et al, 2016).…”

X’s and O’s, Angles and Games

“…Both cameras provide similar ending compositions, with the Madden camera utilizing a greater percentage of the vertical space than the traditional camera's horizontal space (Figure 3). When a viewer attempts to estimate the yardage gained from the line of scrimmage, regardless of whether the ball is thrown or run, they make an estimation using visual strategies, which have been shown to be key factors in visual perception (Van der Ham & Borst, 2011). A visual strategy might involve watching where the ball stops and using the one-yard and five-yard marks on the field to estimate how far the ball traveled.…”

Biological Specifics of Musical Performing Memory Essence for Musical Performance Efficiency

“…-specializes in vector coding of movements with the relationship between objects [38,41,43,45,46,51,171,173,178,199,236,254,256,289,333,370,391,429], with the activity of the dorsal premotor cortex controlling the sequences of movements [190]. The neurons of the premotor cortex have receptive fields that move with the hand [164] and encode targets in systems that are motionless relative to the hand [63].…”