Measurement of mental rotation presents a serious challenge to cognitive researchers owing to the lack of a single comprehensive measure that can be applied across the developing age groups. Objective of the present study was to develop and validate a new measure of mental rotation for preadolescent and adolescent age groups. Items were conceptualized and constructed based on existing theories. Study I checked the suitability of these items among preadolescent and adolescent age groups. After revisions, Study II was done to evaluate the item properties using item response theory. Subsequently done Confirmatory Factor Analysis provided evidence for the construct validity of the new measure. Finally, Study III was done to develop the age wise and gender wise norms for preadolescent and adolescent age groups. The newly developed measure was found to have sufficient reliability and validity and hence can be widely applied for measuring mental rotation of preadolescents and adolescents.
One important aspect of Visuospatial Reasoning is the ability to rotate an object mentally. Presently, one of the most popular and widely used test of Mental Rotation is the Redrawn version of Vandenberg & Kuse Mental Rotation test (VMRT) However, this test has often been criticised to be more difficult because of its complicated scoring system. Present study compared this standard test of mental rotation ability with a newly constructed test with less number of items and less complicated scoring system. We collected data from 147 adolescent school students (Mean age=13.10 years; SD=1.84) by administering both the tests consecutively. Findings showed that VMRT has very high difficulty index as compared to the newly constructed test. The latter also proved to be a more reliable and valid measure of mental rotation ability as compared to VMRT. Discussion focused on the relative advantage of the newly constructed test for assessing mental rotation ability.
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