The influence of body position and spatial orientation of an object on mental rotation task's performance

The research question is the way the mind deals with the mental rotation of visual objects depending on the observer's body position and the spatial orientation of these objects. In the light of the experiment's data, there are no differences between subjects rotating objects in the vertical or horizontal body position and between subjects rotating objects presented in objectively different orientations. Only interaction between body position and an object's orientation significantly modified the process of its mental rotation. When we are lying down on one side, then all our representations of the real-world objects have a natural tendency to lay down on the same side. This is good evidence for the mental representation's embodiment. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.