Age-related changes in how 3.5- to 5.5-year-olds observe and imagine rotational object motion

Gender stereotypes in preschoolers’ mental rotation

“…When not accounting for SES, our results indicate a progression in MR performance, regarding response times, with increasing age. A progression of mental rotation ability with age would be in line with a study of Pedrett et al (2022) who showed that mental rotation ability of asymmetrical shapes continued to develop between 3.5 and 5.5 years. However, when SES is considered, response times do not share a relationship with age.…”

A Novel Approach to Assessing Infant and Child Mental Rotation

“…However, in contrast to infants tested in similar violation-of-expectation tasks ( Möhring and Frick 2013 ), neither the toddlers nor the preschoolers exhibited longer looking at the mirrored image. These results suggest that conventional measures of infant mental rotation failed to reveal evidence of mental rotation in toddlers ( Pedrett et al 2020 ) or preschool-aged children ( Pedrett et al 2023 ). It is noteworthy that other aspects of their findings—such as children’s anticipatory looking to the location where the rotating shape would appear immediately after occlusion—were indicative of mental rotation, but the authors concluded that children’s anticipatory looking in this specific procedure reflected a less sophisticated cognitive process than what is typically measured in mental rotation studies.…”

“…Mental rotation is a critically important spatial cognitive skill that appears to emerge in infancy (e.g., Moore and Johnson 2008 ) and undergoes development across childhood (e.g., Estes 1998 ; Frick et al 2013 ; Pedrett et al 2023 ). Moreover, mental rotation is related to the development of other spatial skills ( Mix et al 2016 ; Newcombe et al 2019 ) and is associated with mathematical achievement ( Cheng and Mix 2014 ; Frick 2019 ; Mix et al 2016 ; Verdine et al 2014 ) and entry into the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematical (STEM) fields ( Newcombe and Frick 2010 ; Shea et al 2001 ; Wai et al 2009 ).…”

“…Mental rotation tasks that measure looking time are a promising methodological tool for bridging the conceptual gaps in our understanding of mental rotation from infancy through early childhood. In fact, studies have adapted a violation-of-expectation procedure to assess mental rotation in toddlers ( Pedrett et al 2020 ) and preschool-aged children ( Pedrett et al 2023 ). In a series of studies conducted by Pedrett et al, children were initially familiarized with a rotating object that disappeared behind an occluder during the later phases of familiarization.…”

“…Although a promising first step, the work by Pedrett et al ( 2020 , 2023 ) highlights the challenges that arise when infant looking-time procedures are used to index mental rotation in older children. Not only did older children fail to show evidence of mental transformation of objects in a violation-of-expectation procedure, but this task cannot be used to systematically examine angular disparity effects because it involves a limited number of trials 1 .…”