A Research Note on Decision Making During Displacements on Urban Maps: Effectiveness of Spatial Imagery

The purpose of this exploratory study was to probe the cognitive processes of undergraduate students at varying mental rotation ability (MRA) levels during mental rotation tasks. The study group consisted of 14 undergraduate students from the Psychological Counseling and Guidance Department and Computer Education and Instructional Technologies Department at Hacettepe University. Firstly, participants’ mental rotation ability levels were determined. Secondly, participants were grouped according to their mental rotation test scores. Then, they were given two digital tangram problems with different difficulty levels. During their interaction with Tangram problems, their eye movements were recorded. The Mann Whitney U test was run to compare differences in eye movements across different mental rotation ability level groups. As a result, it was found that while there were significant differences in eye movement metrics between different mental rotation ability levels for the easy tangram problem, there were no significant differences observed in eye movement metrics for the difficult tangram problem. In addition, examining completion time showed that while easy tangram problem completion time was significantly shorter for people with a higher score on the mental rotation test, there were no significant differences between completion times of different level mental rotation ability groups when solving the difficult tangram problem. Since the spatial ability is an important predictor of task performance and completion time, it is suggested that adaptive learning environments should be designed to compensate for low MRA level learners.

This study investigated prospective social studies teachers’ spatial abilities. It was conducted with 234 prospective teachers attending Social Studies Teaching departments at Education Faculties of two universities in Central and Southern Anatolia. This study, designed according to the explanatory-sequential design, is a mixed research method, involving two stages. The first stage was conducted in the causal-comparative research design. The data were collected using “Mental Rotation Test” and “Surface Development Test”. Descriptive statistics, MANOVA and ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The second stage was designed as a case study. “Opinion Form for Spatial Ability Tests” was used to elicit the views of 37 prospective teachers (F:20, M:17) identified via the purposive sampling method. The qualitative data obtained were analyzed using the content analysis technique. The study results showed that spatial visualization and mental rotation abilities of the prospective teachers were low; male prospective teachers were betterqualified than female ones in mental rotation but spatial visualization ability did not vary by gender. Moreover, prospective teachers with higher academic averages had better spatial abilities. Integrating virtual environment applications such as Google Earth etc. into social studies courses and using them in these courses can help to improve prospective teachers’ spatial abilities.

Embodied mental rotation is the influence of the body on mental rotation ability. Sports expertise enhances embodied mental rotation ability. However, sport-skill-dependent effects remain unclear. Previous studies refer to the influence of body positions on mental rotation ability. Yet, in sports, the investigation of the effect of simultaneous body and mental rotation movements is essential. Athletes need to constantly mentally and physically adapt to environmental changes and new motor tasks while being in motion themselves. This study aimed to investigate embodied mental rotation ability with simultaneous body and mental rotation in individuals with different sport skills, i.e., in open- and closed-skill sports. Forty-eight men and women, divided into two groups depending on their sport, performed 32 trials of an extended embodied mental rotation task. Simultaneous body and mental rotation were enabled by a novel test method including Virtual Reality. Results revealed shorter response times to the task stimulus in closed-skill sports participants than in open-skill sports participants. This group difference was significant for trials in which rotation directions of the own body and the mental rotation stimulus were aligned. The results might be related to sport-specific skill development processes. Motor imitation skills, as relevant in many closed-skill sports, may facilitate cognitive processes when the motion direction of the own body and of the mental rotation stimulus are aligned. The novel test method identifies potential applications that should be increasingly explored in the future, both for cognitive science and sports research.

Abstract. People always need the help of maps when traveling or finding a restaurant. Maps carry geospatial information of a place with roads, landmarks, coordinate systems and so on. When people are reading maps, the first thing our brains do is to fit the map to the realistic environment, trying to integrate the 2-D maps into the 3-D world. In other words, we are managing to align the two different coordinate systems which the map and external realistic environment provide. However, when the direction of the map is not perfectly aligned with the external realistic environment, a person may need more time and effort to do the alignment. And if the map is near upside down, this task could become a challenge and possibly cause a person making a wrong judgment. This situation is called the alignment effect. Alignment effect is the extra time and effort required to rotate the mental representation of physical maps. When someone is doing map aligning, the ability of rotation is needed, either rotating the actual map or rotating the space in the mind. Mental rotation is one of the fundamental factors that could determine a person’s map aligning ability. Previous studies have highlighted the significance of mental rotation ability in map aligning and also confirmed the relationship between mental rotation ability and alignment effect. Measuring mental rotation ability could understand how and where people see on a map. Its significance is not just about designing a map, but also how people process geospatial information on a map. Therefore, the research question of the study is how we quantify people’s ability of mental rotation.Eye tracking approach helps understand how people see or read things, and provide insights into people’s ways of reasoning and problem solving. We randomly choose the 12 college students (undergraduate and graduate) as participants in this study, all in the age of 18–30, and studied in the same university. The sex ratio is balanced; among the 12 participants, there were 6 males and 6 females. All the participants were required to fill the questionnaires and experiment consents before the eye tracking experiment. Then, we are attempted to profile the geospatial reasoning process by measuring and recording participants’ gaze positions and eye movements. The eye-tracking experiment for each participant includes 6 tasks, including different degrees of rotation and quantities of key map elements with high degree of rotation. Each of the tasks contains two stimuli, the first stimuli would instruct the participants to find their own location and the destination, and the second stimuli would examine their abilities of map aligning. When doing map aligning, they would see a map and a street view from their location. The participants are required to decide which direction is the destination from his/her position. This stimulus remains 15 seconds. Then, a participant is requested to give his/her answer in 8 directions and cannot be able to look at the map and the street view. The participant will score one point if his/her answer is correct. Finally, we summarize the scores of these tasks for representing the his/her performance of mental rotation ability.Our preliminary results showed participants with good mental rotation ability share similar patterns, implying that common rules of geospatial reasoning can be identified. Meanwhile, participants with poor mental rotation ability spent more time to search map information in difficult tasks. Therefore, we conclude that landmarks could be better clues than street names for map alignment and building a sense of direction, which implies that better map design (e.g. more landmarks) may be the key for improving map reading. In sum, we measured people’s map aligning performances and identify common rules of geospatial reasoning. This study lightens up the importance and value of eye-tracking approach in cartographic studies, and also brings a new perspective to understand the process of geospatial reasoning.

Sex specific relationships between infants’ mental rotation ability and amiotic sex hormones

Historical research has previously described sex differences in mental rotation ability. Here, we sought to determine whether such sex differences still exist via a systematic review and meta-analysis. Using the University of Nottingham's Library database, Google Scholar and PubMed, all studies investigating sex differences in mental rotation since 2010 were considered. Existing meta-analyses, along with studies that did not compare both males' and females' biological sex, used stated mental rotation tests (MRT) and did not make the full text available, were excluded. The systematic review identified 41 relevant studies, and a meta-analysis was carried out on 59 effect sizes from this sample. Analysis found that males performed better than females in mental rotation tasks, and the effect size (d = 0.60, 95% CI [0.54 to 0.67]) was of a similar magnitude to prior meta-analyses. Subgroup analysis also confirmed that the MRT produced the greatest effect size. An Eggers test reported no evidence of publication bias; however, there was significant heterogeneity within the research data. Overall, these results are consistent with previous research; however, raise questions as to why the MRT elicits significantly greater effect sizes than other mental rotation assessments.

Objective The present research sought to investigate the impact of total flight time and recent flight time on instrument flight performance. Background Studies that examined the impact of total flight time and recent flight time on pilot proficiency and have reported mixed results for both total time and recent flight time. The present study examined the impact of total and recent flight time along with vocabulary and mental rotation on instrument flight performance. Method Thirty-nine instrument pilots were recruited from the aviation program at a midwestern university. All had successfully completed FAA approved instrument flight training. Each participant was required to conduct an instrument flight using an ELITE Personal Computer Aircraft Training Device (PCATD) to simulate instrument flight. The impact of total and recent flight time, total and recent instrument time (both actual and simulated), and recent instrument approaches along with vocabulary ability and mental rotation on instrument flight proficiency was examined using multiple regression procedures. Results The results revealed no significant effect of any of the predictor variables on specific deviations from a perfect flight profile using several navigation measures. Pilot adherence to proper flight procedures was primarily predicted by mental rotation ability, vocabulary ability but not flight time. Mental rotation ability also predicted major flight errors. Conclusion These results indicate that individual differences in instrument flight proficiency were predicted by vocabulary and mental rotation ability, while flight time (total or recent) had minimal impact on flight performance.

Influence of spatial imagery and imagery control on geometric form location in paintings

ABSTRACTIndividuals differ in how they mentally imagine past events. When reminiscing about a past experience, some individuals remember the event accompanied by rich visual images, while others will remember it with few of these images. In spite of the implications that these differences in the use of imagery have to the understanding of human memory, few studies have taken them into consideration. We examined how imagery interference affecting event memory retrieval was differently modulated by spatial and object imagery ability. We presented participants with a series of video-clips depicting complex events. Participants subsequently answered true/false questions related to event, spatial, or feature details contained in the videos, while simultaneously viewing stimuli that interfered with visual imagery processes (dynamic visual noise; DVN) or a control grey screen. The impact of DVN on memory accuracy was related to individual differences in spatial imagery ability. Individuals high in spatial imagery were less accurate at recalling details from the videos when simultaneously viewing the DVN stimuli compared to those low in spatial imagery ability. This finding held for questions related to the event and spatial details but not feature details. This study advocates for the inclusion of individual differences when studying memory processes.

Facilitating recognition of spatial structures through animation and the role of mental rotation ability

Research on mental rotation has consistently found sex differences, with males outperforming females on mental rotation tasks like the Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) mental rotation test (MRT; D. Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995). Mental rotation ability has been found to be enhanced with experience (Nazareth, Herrera & Pruden, 2013) and training (Wright, Thompson, Ganis, Newcombe, & Kosslyn, 2008) and the effects of training have been found to be transferable to other spatial tasks (Wright et al., 2008) and sustainable for months (Terlecki, Newcombe, & Little, 2008). Although, we now are fairly certain about the malleability of spatial tasks and the role of spatial activity experience, we seem to have undervalued an important piece of the puzzle. What is the mechanism by which experiential factors enhance mental rotation performance? In other words, what is it that develops in an individual as a consequence of experience? The current dissertation sought to address this gap in the literature by examining cognitive strategy selection as a possible mechanism by which experiential factors like early spatial activity experience enhance mental rotation performance. A total of 387 adult university students were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions. The three experimental conditions differed in the amount and type of non-spatial information present in the task stimuli. Participant eye movement was recorded using a Tobii X60 eye tracker. Study I investigated the different types of cognitive strategies selected during mental rotation, where eye movement patterns were used as indicators of the underlying cognitive strategies. A latent profile analysis revealed two distinct eye movement patterns significantly predicting mental rotation performance. Study II examined the role of early spatial activity experience in mental rotation performance. Male sex-typed spatial activities were found to significantly mediate the relation between participant sex and mental rotation performance. Finally, Study III examined the developmental role of early spatial activity experience in cognitive strategy selection and strategy flexibility to enhance mental rotation performance. Strategy flexibility was found to be significantly associated with mental rotation performance. Male sex-typed spatial activity experiences were found to be significantly associated with cognitive strategy selection but not strategy flexibility. Implications for spatial training and educational pedagogy in the STEM fields are discussed.

Men typically outperform women in Mental Rotation (MR) tasks, a skill that is crucial to many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields. Research suggests this difference may be a partial cause for the gender gap in the sciences. Previous findings indicate that practicing MR, especially through physical science classes, may increase women’s MR performance and, perhaps, increase their involvement in STEM disciplines. However, conflicting results from existing studies make it difficult to determine the exact effect various science experiences have on MR. This study examined the relationship between physical science experience and performance on selected items from the Purdue Visualizations of Rotations Test (PVRT). College student participants with different science backgrounds (physical science, biological science, no science) completed the PVRT and provided data about their personal and childhood experiences with MR-related tasks, their perceptions of their task performance, and their college course experiences. Our results showed no significant sex differences in performance but did show that experience in physical science courses (chemistry and physics) predicted MR, while biological science experience decreased performance on these tasks. A lack of self-handicapping also predicted MR. These findings suggest that practicing these skills in classes may increase MR ability.

This study investigated the relation between motor development, intelligence and mental rota tion ability in 5 to 6-year-old children. 80 children performed a standardized motor test (MOT 4-6), a paper-pencil mental rotation test (BIRT) and a non-verbal reasoning test (CPM). A multiple regression analysis revealed that intelligence and motor control abilities were significant and independent predictors of mental rotation performance.

Previous studies provided evidence of a relationship between mental rotation (MR) and motor processes in children and adults. However, there is no direct evidence that MR ability is a reliable predictor of success for motor performance. After completion of a MR test, the motor performance of 7- to 8-year-old and 11- to 12-year-old children was measured along a steeple chase and an equivalent straight distance sprint. The chase involved several motor actions requiring, among different competencies, spatial abilities such as performing a forward roll, jumping, crawling, turning, and changing directions. Data revealed that the time taken to complete the chase was influenced by speed and sex, but also by the individual MR ability. Based on these findings, we assume that MR and motor performance may share similar subprocesses.

A chronometric mental rotation paradigm was applied to examine manipulation of visual imagery in early adolescence in relation to age, sex, mental rotation ability (measured psychometrically), and socioeconomic background. Fifth- and seventh-grade boys and girls from middle and lower socioeconomic backgrounds viewed tachistiscopically letters of the alphabet presented at 0 degrees, 60 degrees, 120 degrees, and 180 degrees of rotation and were asked to judge whether the letter was forward or backward. In one condition, children were given no information about the test letter, and in the other, advance visual information about its identity and orientation was provided. With age, children became more skillful at rotating and were more likely to show evidence of using the advance information as a visual image. There were no sex differences. Socioeconomic differences were more pronounced in the fifth than the seventh grade. Children showing high mental rotation ability were more likely than low-ability children to show evidence of rotating visual stimuli on the chronometric measure. The findings are discussed in terms of adolescent cognitive development.