[xmca] Sayeki/Mental Rotation

[mike cole <lchcmike@gmail.com>]

Andy et al--

I fear the text of Sayeki's paper was confusing because it matters a lot
where the
picture of the head fits on the figure to be rotated.

I attach his ISCAR talk which was mentioned by Jean Lave in her paper. The
mental
rotation experiment I had in mind is placed in a considerably larger
context there but
for purposes of what I meant when pointing at this work begins on p. 18
"Mental Rotation."

I may still be totally confused, but in order to figure that out it would
help if you had more
direct access to the phenomenon.

My idea was that the change of the slope of time that it takes to make a
match between the
target figure and the one you are asked to "rotate mentally" provides a
measure of the work that it requires to "ascend to the concrete" by
matching the correct figure. In either the case of an arbitrary figure or
one with the head in the wrong place, higher psychological functions must
operate almost purely on the rotation of an image through time until they
can find a match-- the more the displacement, the longer it takes. With a
head in the right position, bingo. I was sorta of thinking of the bare
figures as abstract -- things, figures, objects, pictures? Whatever, oddly
like a part of an Escher drawing. The figure with the head in the right"
place, the one that accesses that linguistically encoded "concept", head, I
"see" the boy immediately and use that knowledge to rise to the concrete so
quickly if feels like "direct perception."

The ppt raises a lot of related questions that might be addressable in
other terms.

mike
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