Mental rotation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Under Mental rotation is the ability of two or three-dimensional rotating objects in spirit. The performance is determined by the so-called mental rotation test (abbreviation MRT ).

The performance depends on the angle of rotation and is typically between approx. 1 s for small angles up to approx. 5 s for rotations of 180 degrees. The mean recognition time for men is about 0.1 to 1 s better than for women, depending on the variable. This mental ability is one of the few in which a fundamental, i.e. H. uneducated, spiritual difference between the sexes is even recognizable. A certain trainability, especially in the case of deficits, has been proven.

Mental rotation is a component of spatial cognition and is usually located in the right hemisphere . Typical tests consist of a reference figure and an identical or different comparison figure that can be rotated to different degrees in the spatial planes. The task of the test persons is then usually to transform the comparison figure into the reference figure by mentally turning in order to make a decision regarding the equality.

Important research

Roger Shepard and Jacqueline Metzler (1971) were the first to discover the phenomenon . They were able to show that the time it takes to mentally turn a cube figure corresponds to a real rotation: the further two figures are twisted against each other, the longer it takes to make a decision about equal or unequal. In doing so, they made an important contribution to the so-called imagery debate : the mental rotation, i.e. the pure idea of ​​a rotation, corresponds exactly to a rotation actually performed physically. This is an indication that the idea and perception are basically the same. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging , it is now possible to determine which areas in the brain correspond to mental rotation:

So there is v. a. Activations in the Brodmann areas 7A and 7B, the striatum , the hand somatosensory system and the frontal lobe .

Gender differences

Mental rotation is the cognitive component that most reliably and most clearly repeatedly shows gender differences in favor of men. However, it also shows that the ability to mentally rotate is on average less developed among humanities students than among natural sciences students . For example, a computer science student can do better than a sociology student (Peters et al. 2006).

Test procedure

The most important test methods for examining the ability to mental rotation are the so-called Vandenberg and Kuse test and the resulting mental rotation test by Peters and colleagues.

See also

Web links

literature

  • M. Peters, B. Laeng, K. Latham, M. Jackson, R. Zaiyouna, C. Richardson: A redrawn Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotations Test: Different versions and factors that affect performance. In: Brain and Cognition. Volume 28, 1995, pp. 39-58.
  • M. Peters, W. Lehmann, S. Takahira, Y. Takeuchi, K. Jordan: Mental rotation test performance in four cross-cultural samples (n = 3367): overall sex differences and the role of academic program in performance. In: Cortex. Volume 42, No. 7, 2006, pp. 1005-1014.
  • RN Shepard, J. Metzler: Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects. In: Science. Volume 171, 1971, pp. 701-703.
  • SG Vandenberg, AR Kuse: Mental rotations, a group test of three-dimensional spatial visualization. In: Perceptual and motor skills. Volume 47, 1978, pp. 599-604.
  • G. Wiedenbauer: Manual training of mental rotation. Inaugural dissertation to obtain the doctoral degree of the Mathematical and Natural Science Faculty of the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 2006. ( PDF )