Mental rotation of cubes with a snake face: The role of the human-body analogy revisited

Human-body analogy improves mental rotation performance in people aged 86 to 97 years

“…Using a paper-and-pencil test comprising items on abstract and human-like objects, the present study demonstrated that the human-body analogy improved mental rotation accuracy in oldest-old adults. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evidence to support that the body analogy effect, which has been observed in younger populations [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]32,33 , also occurs in older populations.…”

“…As the human-body advantage in an oldest-old population reported here is a qualitative replication of the human-body analogy effect previously observed in younger adults, we considered the mechanisms underlying improved mental rotation accuracy for human-like objects in the present study's participants. As described in the introduction, embodying to-be-rotated objects is considered to prompt a more efficient holistic rotation strategy, rather than a piecemeal rotation strategy, since human bodies are more familiar and thus more likely to be regarded as a whole [21][22][23]27,29,32,33 . This is consistent with previous reports that older adults tended to use a piecemeal rotation strategy for abstract objects, because of a lack of cognitive resources, 51 but a holistic rotation strategy for familiar objects 43 .…”

“…This suggests that familiarity or other stimulus features not specific to human bodies could facilitate holistic mental rotation. Following the notion that projection of one's own body axis onto stimuli leads to the human-body analogy effect, 21,22,26,27,29 and given that people can conduct such a bodily projection even for abstract objects that have two or more orthogonal axes, 65 Second, which process of mental rotation is facilitated by the human-body analogy? Based on an influential model assuming three subprocesses for chronometric mental rotation task performance 66,67 , several studies have focused on which processes decline with age.…”

“…A holistic rotation strategy involves mentally rotating an object as a whole and enables faster and more accurate mental rotation; however, a piecemeal rotation strategy involves mentally rotating parts of an object one by one and is linked to slower and less accurate mental rotation [34][35][36] . Consistent with this notion, human-like objects are considered to elicit an efficient holistic mental rotation strategy, as human bodies are more likely than abstract objects to be regarded as a whole 21,23,27,29 .…”

“…Using an embodied cognition approach to mental rotation, previous experimental studies with young adults (mostly university students) have repeatedly demonstrated that objects resembling human bodies can be mentally rotated more quickly than abstract objects [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] . Furthermore, psychometric studies using paper-and-pencil tests, such as the Vandenberg and Kuse Mental Rotation Test, 30,31 demonstrated that items for human-like objects could be answered more accurately than items for abstract objects 32,33 .…”