Mental Rotation - Introduction

Introduction

Mental rotation is somewhat localized to the right cerebral hemisphere. It is thought to take place largely in the same areas as perception. It is associated with the rate of spatial processing and intelligence (Johnson 1990, Jones 1982, Hertzog 1991). Mental rotation is the brain moving objects in order to understand what they are and where they belong. It has been studied to try to figure out how the mind recognizes objects in the environment. Researchers call these objects stimuli. A stimulus then would be any object or image seen in the person’s environment that has been altered in some way. Mental rotation then takes place for the person to figure out what the altered object is.

Mental rotation can be separated into the following cognitive stages (Johnson 1990):

  1. Create a mental image of an object
  2. Rotate the object mentally until a comparison can be made
  3. Make the comparison
  4. Decide if the objects are the same or not
  5. Report the decision

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