Mental rotation

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between the skills that constitute school readiness, such as linguistic, phonological, logical-mathematical and psychomotor skills, and mental imagery processes in preschool children. The participants were 100 healthy children (50 boys and 50 girls) aged four to five. Two batteries of tests were used to assess school readiness and different aspects of the mental imagery processes. The mental imagery battery measured mental imagery generation, inspection, and rotation of images. The results showed a relationship between the generation and inspection processes and the level of skills that constitute school readiness. These findings emphasize the potential usefulness of screening all preschoolers and kindergarteners for imagery ability, with the aim of adopting effective measures to increase their mental imagery abilities.

Success in STEM fields depends largely on robust spatial skills, in particular on the ability to perform a mental rotation. Given that this ability can be nurtured, this article includes examples of diverse relevant tasks appropriate for grades 6–8 students.

Individual differences are observed in processing and usage of spatial information in all areas of our lives. This study focuses on the relationship between spatial thinking style and spatial ability by holding gender constant. Gender, frequently reported in the literature, was predicted not to be the only factor explaining individual differences but there are other factors such as spatial representation. The sample consisted of all women, 61 university students. Spatial thinking style was measured by self-report questionnaires and spatial ability by Mental Rotation (MR) test. To enable the use of different strategies, 3D stimuli were presented in whole and cut form, followed by the Spatial Representation Questionnaire and the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction Scale. Participants were categorized according to the way they represented space in their minds (survey or landmark). The main finding of the MR literature, Angular Disparity Effect, was replicated; as the angular disparity between the stimuli pair increased, response time slowed down and the accuracy ratio decreased. Furthermore, the stimulus shape and spatial representation were found to influence MR performance. As the angular disparity increased, so did the complexity of the task, and participants, who formed survey representations rotated the figures than the ones with landmark representations. Same pattern was observed with stimulus shape; as angular disparity increased, whole figures were rotated faster. Supporting the previous findings, current study suggests that differences in spatial cognition and spatial skills cannot solely be explained by gender but other factors such as spatial thinking style play an important part.

В статье рассматривается процесс формирования пространственных представлений у детей дошкольного возраста. Приводятся этапы развития представлений о местности и пространственных отношениях между предметами у детей. Описана зарубежная методика диагностики умственного вращения дошкольников.
Ключевые слова: пространственное мышление, пространственные представления, умственное вращение, дошкольный возраст.

Ссылка на статью: Троцкая Е.С. Развитие пространственных представлений у детей дошкольного возраста // Взаимодействие академической и практико-ориентированной психологии в сфере образования: материалы национальной научно-практической интернет-конференции с международным участием / под науч. ред. В.А. Мазилова. – Ярославль: ЯГПУ им. К.Д. Ушинского, 2018. С. 169–171.

Cognitive training has recently become a primary topic of interest in cognitive psychology. The discovery of a strong relationship between WM and Gf gave rise to new cognitive training methods (like dual n-back task), which challenged traditional views of intelligence as a fixed trait in healthy adults. Previous research has shown mixed results in the ability of cognitive training to improve fluid intelligence. Presented dissertation aims to first replicate such effects in a study with (N=142) participants, and then to explore the mediating role of personality systems interaction (PSI) personality factors. In addition, univariate and bivariate analyses of two n-back related, self-report questionnaires (N=258 and N=97) are presented. Experimental results showed improvements in one out of two IQ test scores, which reflects the ambivalent nature of previous research in this field. After examining the results in context of PSI theory, it was found that different training methods yielded different IQ gains in participants, depending on their personality styles. In addition, these correlations suggested a meaningful pattern, indicating that PSI theory may be able to account for the different outcomes of cognitive training studies. Analysis of self-report questionnaires suggests, among other things, that the use of mental strategies during n-back training does not influence prospective IQ gains, and neither does the motivation to participate in n-back study. Qualitative reports complement these findings by offering unique insights into the subjective experiences of people who trained n-back. The presented findings may facilitate tailor-made cognitive training interventions in the future, and can contribute to explaining the mechanisms underlying the far-transfer of working memory training to fluid intelligence.

Music is organized in two primary dimensions: pitch and time. Musicians tend to think of melodic phrases as shapes in musical space. These shapes can be transformed in various ways: mirrored, reversed, enlarged, diminished, and reoriented. It is plausible that in carrying out these transformations the brain may draw on spatial abilities developed for visual processing such as those used for the mental rotation of objects. Our experimental paradigm was to have men and women over a wide range of musical expertise perform a visuospatial rotation task and a melodic transformation task, as well as a non-spatial musical task: timbre judgment. Performance was positively correlated among the three tasks overall, but the pattern of correlations differed between sexes. Men performed better than women on all three tasks, and for men the only significant correlation among the three tasks and musical experience was that between the visual and musical tasks. For women all three tasks were correlated with each other, and performance on the musical task was correlated with musical experience. These results show that men are generally better on pattern-recognition task irrespective the modality of pattern. The results suggest that the specific visuospatial abilities in men are utilized for performing the musical task. Men’s skill in transforming melodies is not much affected by their musical expertise. In contrast, for women,​ the results suggest the involvement of more general cognitive mechanisms and the effect of crystallized intelligence in solving melodic transformation tasks.

This study investigated the relationship between visuo-spatial representation, mental rotation (MR) and functional anatomy examination results. A total of 184 students completed the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT), Mental Rotation Test (MRT) and Gordon Test of Visual Imagery Control. The time spent on personal assignment was also considered. Men were found to score better than women on both GEFT and MRT, but the gender effect was limited to the interaction with MRT ability in the anatomy learning process. Significant correlations were found between visuo-spatial, MR abilities, and anatomy examination results. Data resulting from the best students’ analyzes underscore the effect of high MR ability which may be considered reliable predictor of success in learning anatomy. The use of specific tests during learning sessions may facilitate the acquisition of anatomical knowledge.

Previous studies suggest that visual encoding of ethnicity of in-group/out-group members might influence empathy and sensorimotor sharing. Here, we investigated whether mental perspective taking, presumably a precursor of empathy, is also influenced by in-group/ out-group perception and the implicit attitudes toward it. We used an embodied egocentric visual-perspective taking task, the full body rotation task (FBR), in which participants were asked to mentally rotate themselves into the position of dark-or light-skinned bodies. FBR was contrasted to a pure sensorimotor task, the hand laterality task (HLT), in which participants were asked to mentally rotate their hand to the posture of seen light-or dark-skinned hands, which does not require mental simulation of another person's perspective. We expected the FBR but not the HLT to be influenced by the skin color of the stimuli and by the individual implicit biases toward out-group members. Contrary to this hypothesis, we found that neither skin color nor implicit biases modulated reaction times (RTs) in either task. The data thus suggest that unlike other empathy tasks, skin color does not influence visuospatial perspective taking.

There have been several proposals for the mechanism by which we are able to recognize an object across a number of viewpoints. Viewpoint-dependent accounts suggest that recognition may be based on an incremental transformation (e.g., mental rotation) strategy, while a variety of viewpoint-independent mechanisms for object recognition have also been proposed. Recent research in neurobiology, based on the two cortical visual systems account, suggest that the processes of viewpoint-dependent and viewpoint-independent object recognition may rely on separate anatomical regions, and that brain lesions may leave patients with selective access to particular types of representation. Evidence from a variety of neuropsychological disorders are reviewed to support the position that viewpoint-independent object recognition depends upon the integrity of occipitotemporal structures. In addition, it is suggested that viewpoint-dependent processes (perhaps depending on occipitoparietal structures) m...

The mental rotation ability is an essential spatial reasoning skill in human cognition and has proven to be an essential predictor of mathematical and STEM skills, critical and computational thinking. Despite its importance, little is known about when and how mental rotation processes are activated in games explicitly targeting spatial reasoning tasks. In particular, the relationship between spatial abilities and Tetris TM has been analysed several times in the literature. However, these analyses have shown contrasting results between the effectiveness of Tetris-based training activities to improve mental rotation skills. In this work, we studied whether, and under what conditions, such ability is used in the Tetris TM game by explicitly modelling mental rotation via an ACT-R based cognitive model controlling a virtual agent. The obtained results show meaningful insights into the activation of mental rotation during game dynamics. The study suggests the necessity to adapt game dynamics in order to force the activation of this process and, therefore, can be of inspiration to design learning activities based on Tetris TM or redesign the game itself to improve its educational effectiveness.