Is There an Assignment of Top and Bottom during Symmetry Perception?

Abstract

We report data from a discrimination task in which participants had to decide whether a single-item display was either vertically symmetric or asymmetric. This decision was found to be easier when items with a top–bottom polarity were placed in an orientation where the wide end was the base of the stimulus and the narrow end was the top. The difference in reaction times between this orientation and its inversion was about 10 ms. We suggest that top and bottom labels are assigned to stimuli during the detection of bilateral symmetry.