The reading of rotated text, an embodied account

Individuals engaged in perceptual tasks often use their bodies to lighten the cognitive load, that is, they replace internal (mental) processing with external (body-based) processing. The present investigation explores how the body is used in the task of reading rotated text. The experimental design allowed the participants to exhibit spontaneous behavior and choose what strategies to use in order to efficiently complete the task. The results demonstrate that the use of external strategies can benefit performance by offloading internal processing.