Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Experimental Brain Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-018-5172-z RESEARCH ARTICLE Testing the perceptual equivalence hypothesis in mental rotation of 3D stimuli with visual and tactile input André F. Caissie 1  · Abhilash Dwarakanath 2  · Lucette Toussaint 3,4,5 Received: 12 August 2016 / Accepted: 5 January 2018 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Previous studies on mental rotation (i.e., the ability to imagine objects undergoing rotation; MR) have mainly focused on visual input, with comparatively less information about tactile input. In this study, we examined whether the processes subtending MR of 3D stimuli with both input modalities are perceptually equivalent (i.e., when learning within-modalities is equal to transfers-of-learning between modalities). We compared participants’ performances in two consecutive task sessions either in no-switch conditions (Visual→Visual or Tactile→Tactile) or in switch conditions (Visual→Tactile or Tactile→Visual). Across both task sessions, we observed MR response diferences with visual and tactile inputs, as well as difcult transfer-of-learning. In no-switch conditions, participants showed signifcant improvements on all dependent measures. In switch conditions, however, we only observed signifcant improvements in response speeds with tactile input (RTs, intercepts, slopes: Visual→Tactile) and close to signifcant improvement in response accuracy with visual input (Tactile→Visual). Model ft analyses (of the rotation angle efect on RTs) also suggested diferent specifcation in learning with tactile and visual input. In “Session 1”, the RTs ftted similarly well to the rotation angles, for both types of percep- tual responses. However, in “Session 2”, trend lines in the ftting analyses changed in a stark way, in the switch and tactile no-switch conditions. These results suggest that MR with 3D objects is not necessarily a perceptually equivalent process. Specialization (and priming) in the exploration strategies (i.e., speed-accuracy trade-ofs) might, however, be the main factor at play in these results—and not MR diferences in and of themselves. Keywords Mental rotation · Vision · Touch · Learning · Transfer-of-learning Introduction The processing of visual spatial information (i.e., object features or geons, see Biederman 1987; Treisman and Gor- mican 1988), the synthesis of visual features into mental rep- resentations (Barquero and Logie 1999; Logie and Helstrup 1999), and the manipulation of these mental representations has interested psychologists for a long time. One special class of representation manipulation is known as mental rotation (MR; Shepard and Metzler 1971) which refers to the process of rotating a mental representation of a perceived stimulus along a mentally represented axis (e.g., imagine the letter “a” rotating to an upside down position). Although we know much about the processing of MR with visual input, we have comparatively less knowledge of the processing involved when stimuli are touched. * André F. Caissie andre.caissie@gmail.com Lucette Toussaint lucette.toussaint@uni-poitiers.fr 1 Department of Psychology, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, “Cognition and Action” Schleichstraße 4, 72076 Tübingen, Germany 2 Department Physiology of Cognitive Processes, Max-Planck-Institut für biologische Kybernetik, Spemannstraβe 38, 72076 Tübingen, Germany 3 Université de Poitiers, Poitiers, France 4 Université François Rabelais de Tours, Tours, France 5 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifque, “Centre de Recherches sur la Cognition et l’Apprentissage”, 5, rue Théodore Lefebvre, 86073 Poitiers, France