Rotational complexity in mental rotation tests: Cognitive processes in tasks requiring mental rotation around cardinal and skewed rotation axes

Cross-disciplinary impact of spatial visualization ability on study success in higher education.

“…This indicates that there is in fact an overlap between the reasoning test and the spatial visualization test that accounts for some variance in posttest content knowledge-most likely representing the general intelligence factor (e.g., Carroll, 1993;Nolte et al, 2022). But spatial visualization ability also accounted for additional posttest content knowledge variance beyond the variance shared with reasoning ability (as indicated by its significant partial regression coefficient)-we expected this to reflect the effect of the incremental spatial visualization ability factor included in the mental rotation test (Nolte et al, 2022). So, while general intelligence is certainly relevant for academic achievement in general, specific intelligence facets might be better suited to explaining achievement in different domains.…”

Using eye gaze to reveal cognitive processes and strategies of engineering students when solving spatial rotation and mental cutting tasks

“…The literature provides a strong research foundation on cognitive processes in spatial ability and thinking. Initial research conducted by Cooper and Shepard (1973) conceptualized three sequential cognitive processes for a mental rotation that still dominate current research today (Hegarty & Waller, 2004; Nolte et al, 2022; Xue et al, 2017): The encoding of the stimuli as an internal representation in working memory. This internal representation must include the essential structure or features of the stimulus to be effective for subsequent cognitive processing. The transformation of the mental representation in correspondence with the real‐world stimuli.…”

“…Subsequent research into these cognitive processes of spatial ability has revealed that familiarity with the objects decreases the processing time for encoding (Cooper & Shepard, 1973), while disparity between the initial and target object representation increases the processing time for transformation (Heil et al, 1998; Terlecki et al, 2008), and any mismatch between transformed and target mental representations increases processing time for confirmation (Just & Carpenter, 1976). Recently, researchers have found no distinguishing factors in the ability to mentally rotate along a cardinal axis or a completely skewed axis (Nolte et al, 2022), suggesting that rotation along a skewed axis can be broken down into multiple rotations along a cardinal axis for easier transformation. These findings directed the development of spatial training methods to “strengthen” these cognitive processes or simply spatial ability, particularly through training exercises (e.g., Leone et al, 1993; Munoz‐Rubke et al, 2021; also refer to reviews by Drauden, 1980 and Wauck, 2020).…”

“…The literature also includes an analysis of the interactions between cognitive processes and strategies in spatial thinking. For example, Just and Carpenter (1985) argued that the transformation process is inherently piecemeal based on the correlation of transformation processing time with the degree of disparity between initial and target object representation, with several studies supporting their conclusion that the transformation process is inherently piecemeal (Nolte et al, 2022; Xue et al, 2017). Recent research has explored the potential of encoding as a strategy for solving spatial problems.…”

“…The literature provides a strong research foundation on cognitive processes in spatial ability and thinking. Initial research conducted by Cooper and Shepard (1973) conceptualized three sequential cognitive processes for a mental rotation that still dominate current research today (Hegarty & Waller, 2004;Nolte et al, 2022;Xue et al, 2017):…”