The impact of retinal size on mental transformations in imagery: Rotation, synthesis, combination

The following paper is an answer to a research question regarding the impact of retinal size (understood as the tangent of the object’s physical size and its distance from the subject) on mental transformations. A total of 182 people took part in three designed experiments, which included three types of operations: 1) synthesis as an operation changing the structure of the object; 2) rotation as an operation preserving the structure of the object; and 3) a combination of the two. The impact of retinal size on the course of rotation was confirmed. Furthermore, it turned out that this impact significantly influenced the effectiveness of all three mental operations. A tendency regarding the impact of physical size on synthesis was demonstrated (participants performed mental transformations in the most optimal way on 15 cm (5.9 in) objects – such that can be held in a hand in the real world). It was noticeable that the optimal distance to the object, preferred by participants, was 30 cm (11.8 in). In the real world, such a distance enables them to transform objects freely within arm’s reach. The obtained results support the analogousness of the mental world to the world in which we live.