scholarly journals Touching Up Mental Rotation: Effects of Manual Experience on 6-Month-Old Infants’ Mental Object Rotation

2013 ◽  
Vol 84 (5) ◽  
pp. 1554-1565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenke Möhring ◽  
Andrea Frick
Keyword(s):  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Object Rotation ◽  
Mental Object

On the Relation Between Infants’ Spatial Object Processing and Their Motor Skills

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (s1) ◽  
pp. S6-S23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Kubicek ◽  
Gudrun Schwarzer
Keyword(s):  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Motor Skills ◽  
Motor Development ◽  
Major Question ◽  
Object Processing ◽  
Spatial Object ◽  
Object Exploration ◽  
Object Locations ◽  
Object Rotation ◽  
Mental Object

From birth, infants encounter an environment full of objects and learn rapidly about their spatial characteristics. According to Newcombe, Uttal, and Sauter (2013), spatial development includes (1) the development of intraobject representations with the ability to transform them by mental rotation, and (2) the development of interobject representations with the ability to find and predict certain object locations. Infants’ remarkable improvements of these two strands of spatial object processing raise the major question of which factors may drive them. In this article, we discuss the extent to which infants’ development of intra- and interobject representations is related to their emerging motor skills. In particular, we provide a review on how far infants’ development of mental object rotation ability and their ability to localize objects are related to their manual object exploration and locomotion skills. We document a bulk of evidence suggesting such a link between infants’ motor development and their spatial object processing and also discuss and critically reconsider the implications of these studies.

Mental object rotation and the planning of hand movements

2001 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 709-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Wohlschläger
Keyword(s):  
Hand Movements ◽  
Object Rotation ◽  
Mental Object

scholarly journals Mental rotation of hands and objects in ageing and Parkinson’s disease: Implications for understanding motor imagery

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Bek ◽  
Stacey Humphries ◽  
Ellen Poliakoff ◽  
Nuala Brady
Keyword(s):  
Parkinson’S Disease ◽  
Parkinson's Disease ◽  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Motor Imagery ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Hand Laterality ◽  
Object Based ◽  
Object Rotation ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Constraint Effects

Motor imagery (MI) supports motor learning and performance, having the potential to be a useful tool for neurorehabilitation. However, MI ability may be impacted by ageing and neurodegeneration, which could limit its therapeutic effectiveness. MI is often assessed through a hand laterality task (HLT), whereby laterality judgements are typically slower for hands presented at orientations corresponding to physically more difficult postures (a “biomechanical constraint” effect). Performance is also found to differ between back and palm views of the hand, suggesting the differential involvement of visual and sensorimotor strategies. While older adults are generally found to be slowed and show increased biomechanical effects, few studies have examined the effects of both ageing and Parkinson’s disease (PD).The present study compared healthy younger (YA), healthy older (OA) and PD groups on HLT performance from both palm and back views, as well as an object-based (letter) mental rotation task. OA and PD groups were slower than YA, particularly when judging laterality from the back view, and exhibited increased biomechanical constraint effects for the palm. While response times were generally similar between OA and PD groups, the PD group showed reduced accuracy in the back view. Moreover, object rotation was slower and less accurate only in the PD group. The results indicate that different mechanisms are involved in mental rotation of hands viewed from the back or palm, consistent with previous findings, and demonstrate particular effects of ageing and PD when judging the back view. Alongside findings from studies of explicit MI, this suggests a greater alteration of visual than kinaesthetic MI with ageing and neurodegeneration, with additional impairment of object-based visual imagery in PD. The findings are also discussed in relation to different perspectives in MI and the integration of visual and kinaesthetic representations.

Enhancing Spatial Ability Through Sport Practice

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Moreau ◽  
Jérome Clerc ◽  
Annie Mansy-Dannay ◽  
Alain Guerrien
Keyword(s):  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Spatial Representations ◽  
Mental Rotation Test ◽  
Sport Training ◽  
Sport Practice ◽  
Undergraduate University Students ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Cognitive Plasticity ◽  
Reported Data ◽  
The Relationship

This experiment investigated the relationship between mental rotation and sport training. Undergraduate university students (n = 62) completed the Mental Rotation Test ( Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978 ), before and after a 10-month training in two different sports, which either involved extensive mental rotation ability (wrestling group) or did not (running group). Both groups showed comparable results in the pretest, but the wrestling group outperformed the running group in the posttest. As expected from previous studies, males outperformed women in the pretest and the posttest. Besides, self-reported data gathered after both sessions indicated an increase in adaptive strategies following training in wrestling, but not subsequent to training in running. These findings demonstrate the significant effect of training in particular sports on mental rotation performance, thus showing consistency with the notion of cognitive plasticity induced from motor training involving manipulation of spatial representations. They are discussed within an embodied cognition framework.

The Solution Strategy as an Indicator of the Developmental Stage of Preschool Children’s Mental-Rotation Ability

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudia Quaiser-Pohl ◽  
Anna M. Rohe ◽  
Tobias Amberger
Keyword(s):  
Preschool Children ◽  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Latent Class ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
Stage Model ◽  
Solution Strategy ◽  
Thinking Aloud ◽  
Transition Analysis ◽  
Solution Strategies ◽  
Close Relationship

The solution strategies of preschool children solving mental-rotation tasks were analyzed in two studies. In the first study n = 111 preschool children had to demonstrate their solution strategy in the Picture Rotation Test (PRT) items by thinking aloud; seven different strategies were identified. In the second study these strategies were confirmed by latent class analysis (LCA) with the PRT data of n = 565 preschool children. In addition, a close relationship was found between the solution strategy and children’s age. Results point to a stage model for the development of mental-rotation ability as measured by the PRT, going from inappropriate strategies like guessing or comparing details, to semiappropriate approaches like choosing the stimulus with the smallest angle discrepancy, to a holistic or analytic strategy. A latent transition analysis (LTA) revealed that the ability to mentally rotate objects can be influenced by training in the preschool age.

Gender Differences in the Mental Rotations Test (MRT) Are Not Due to Task Complexity

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 130-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinna Titze ◽  
Martin Heil ◽  
Petra Jansen
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Task Complexity ◽  
Time Constraints ◽  
Medium Effects ◽  
Performance Factors ◽  
Mental Rotations ◽  
Sufficient Power ◽  
Forced Choice Tasks ◽  
Choice Tasks

Gender differences are one of the main topics in mental rotation research. This paper focuses on the influence of the performance factor task complexity by using two versions of the Mental Rotations Test (MRT). Some 300 participants completed the test without time constraints, either in the regular version or with a complexity reducing template creating successive two-alternative forced-choice tasks. Results showed that the complexity manipulation did not affect the gender differences at all. These results were supported by a sufficient power to detect medium effects. Although performance factors seem to play a role in solving mental rotation problems, we conclude that the variation of task complexity as realized in the present study did not.

Individual Differences in Mental Rotation

2013 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 164-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Khooshabeh ◽  
Mary Hegarty ◽  
Thomas F. Shipley
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Mental Rotation ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Mental Rotation Task ◽  
Imagery Ability ◽  
Alternative Strategies

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that imagery ability and figural complexity interact to affect the choice of mental rotation strategies. Participants performed the Shepard and Metzler (1971) mental rotation task. On half of the trials, the 3-D figures were manipulated to create “fragmented” figures, with some cubes missing. Good imagers were less accurate and had longer response times on fragmented figures than on complete figures. Poor imagers performed similarly on fragmented and complete figures. These results suggest that good imagers use holistic mental rotation strategies by default, but switch to alternative strategies depending on task demands, whereas poor imagers are less flexible and use piecemeal strategies regardless of the task demands.

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