TY - JOUR
T1 - Action, verbal response and spatial reasoning
AU - Frances Wang, Ranxiao
N1 - Funding Information:
Thanks to Elizabeth Spelke, Mark May and Steffen Werner for discussions on this project, and to Heather Bauer and Rashad Abdul-Salaam for data collection. Supported by NSF Grant BCS 03-17681 to R.F. Wang. Comments should be sent to Frances Wang ( francesw@s.psych.uiuc.edu ).
PY - 2004/12
Y1 - 2004/12
N2 - Studies have shown that perception of distance, orientation and size can be dissociated from action tasks. The action system seems to possess more veridical, unbiased information than the perceptual/verbal system. The current study examines the nature of the distinction between action and verbal responses in a spatial reasoning task. Participants imagined themselves facing different orientations and either pointed to where other objects would be, or verbally reported their egocentric directions (e.g., "50 degrees to my left"). When using pointing responses, RT and error increased as a function of the angular disparity between the imagined heading and their actual heading. However, when using verbal responses, performance was not affected by angular disparity, suggesting that participants knew the direction of the targets from the imagined perspective but could not point to them directly. The verbal and action systems have fundamentally different information or processes rather than quantitatively different ones.
AB - Studies have shown that perception of distance, orientation and size can be dissociated from action tasks. The action system seems to possess more veridical, unbiased information than the perceptual/verbal system. The current study examines the nature of the distinction between action and verbal responses in a spatial reasoning task. Participants imagined themselves facing different orientations and either pointed to where other objects would be, or verbally reported their egocentric directions (e.g., "50 degrees to my left"). When using pointing responses, RT and error increased as a function of the angular disparity between the imagined heading and their actual heading. However, when using verbal responses, performance was not affected by angular disparity, suggesting that participants knew the direction of the targets from the imagined perspective but could not point to them directly. The verbal and action systems have fundamentally different information or processes rather than quantitatively different ones.
KW - Perception and action
KW - Perspective change
KW - Spatial reasoning
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=9944229901&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=9944229901&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2004.05.001
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2004.05.001
M3 - Article
C2 - 15582626
AN - SCOPUS:9944229901
VL - 94
SP - 185
EP - 192
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
SN - 0010-0277
IS - 2
ER -