Mental rotation: Part 1

What we intend to do as the material unfolds is provide key examples of the evidence regarding mental rotation and also try to dispel some common myths that have grown up around it. We conclude that evidence reflects on the way we mentally simulate real world events that would be deployed if the problem were to be solved physically.

Here, Rob discusses a classic experiment on what has come to be known as mental rotation. Of course whether anything is actually rotating inside your head is quite a different matter!

Figure 4 provides examples of the different R and mirror-R stimuli used in the experiment that Rob discusses.

Figure 4. Examples of the ‘R’ stimuli used in the mental rotation experiment.