Seeing through the Body: the Effects of Visual and Sensorimotor Experience on the Analysis of Hands

The processes implicated in the mental rotation of hand stimuli argue strongly for reference to one's own body schema in the visual analysis of hands and, potentially, other body parts. Prolific work by Cooper and Shepard (1975) and by Parsons (1994; 1987) suggests that the motor action of rotating a hand is simulated mentally in these tasks, while more recent studies, especially with left-handed participants, have pointed to the role of stored visual representations in analysing hands (Gentilucci et al., 1998a; 1998b; Ionta & Blanke, 2009). This review assesses the evidence for the use of visual and sensorimotor experience with one's own hands in the mental rotation of hands, as well as exploring how sensorimotor and visual strategies are used in conjunction with one another to analyse hand stimuli effectively. INTRODUCTION: VISUAL HAND ANALYSIS AND THE LATERALITY