Mental Rotation
Mental rotation is the process in which a person manipulates a two-dimensional or three-dimensional object his or her mind. This activity tends to be centralized in the right cerebral cortex. This process was first tested in 1971 by Roger Shepard and Jacqueline Metzler. They found that the more angular rotation an object had, the longer the reaction time will be for a person to determine if the new object is congruent to the original object. It was later determined that mental rotation mainly occurs in the right parietal lobe of the brain. Men tend to have faster mental rotation times than women. This is due to the fact that mental rotation is a spatial task and men usually have stronger spatial abilities than women. However, with practice, both genders can speed up their reaction times.
Related Links
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-imagery/mental-rotation.html
Stanford University description of mental rotation.
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~is1042/html/mentrot.html
Mental rotation test
http://opl.apa.org/Experiments/About/AboutMentalRotation.aspx
Study on mental rotation
http://psychology.unt.edu/~tparsons/pdf/2Parsons_%28Neuropsychologia%29_VR_Spatial_rotation.42.555.pdf
Study of gender differences in mental rotation.
http://dcl.wustl.edu/pubs/ZacksJCogNeuro_08.pdf
Neuro-imaging studies of mental rotation.
http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/123/1/65.full
Selective right parietal lobe activation during mental rotation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-9nWpgTiZM
A video of someone performing an online mental rotation task. You can test yourself too.
http://msgraphix.com/Client/zuber/Zaheen2/dad%27s%20cpu/Sex%20Diff/real%20article.pdf
A large sex difference on a two-dimensional mental rotation task.
http://www.happy-neuron.com/brain-games/visual-spatial/turn-around-and-around
Mental rotation game online.
http://cogprints.org/655/1/paper.htm
Motor processes in mental rotation.
***This page was created by Daria Thompson. To my knowledge, all images, texts, and links are public material. If there are any issues with any copyright material on this page, contact me at Daria.C.Thompson@live.mercer.edu.
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