Fear and anxiety modulate mental rotation

Abstract

We used an emotional priming paradigm to investigate whether fear and anxiety modulate mental rotation of abstract three-dimensional objects (i.e., Shepard-Metzler figures). On each trial, participants viewed pairs of objects and decided whether the objects had the identical shape by mentally rotating the one on the right into congruence with the one on the left. The participants viewed a picture of a face—fearful or neutral—briefly before the pairs of objects appeared. Participants with high state anxiety, and not those with low state anxiety, rotated the objects more quickly after they saw fearful faces than after they saw neutral faces. This result not only documents that fear can improve mental rotation but also shows that this effect is modulated by the emotional arousal of the participants.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• Individual differences
• Mental rotation
• Visual mental imagery