Children's ability to discriminate reflections and rotations of visual stimuli was examined using a kinetic imagery task. It was hypothesized that success would be related to the number and placement of orientation markers on the stimuli, as well as whether or not reflections had to be discriminated from simple rotations. 40 4- and 5-year-old children were directed to imagine how a stimulus would look if rotated to a specified location and asked to indicate the appearance of the reoriented stimulus by selecting the correct option from a number of foils. 48 of the items required only discrimination of a reoriented stimulus. The other 48 also required discrimination of a reflection of the reoriented stimulus. Stimuli differed in the number of orientation cues on the edges of the figures. Results revealed that prediction accuracy was associated with the existence of orientation markers on the stimuli, as well as age, sex, type of discrimination, and several interactions among the variables. Findings were discussed in comparison to a priori predictions based on an analysis of how children might use orientation information when performing mental rotation tasks.

Children's ability to discriminate reflections and rotations of visual stimuli was examined using a kinetic imagery task. It was hypothesized that success would be related to the number and placement of orientation markers on the stimuli, as well as whether or not reflections had to be discriminated from simple rotations. 40 4- and 5-year-old children were directed to imagine how a stimulus would look if rotated to a specified location and asked to indicate the appearance of the reoriented stimulus by selecting the correct option from a number of foils. 48 of the items required only discrimination of a reoriented stimulus. The other 48 also required discrimination of a reflection of the reoriented stimulus. Stimuli differed in the number of orientation cues on the edges of the figures. Results revealed that prediction accuracy was associated with the existence of orientation markers on the stimuli, as well as age, sex, type of discrimination, and several interactions among the variables. Findings were discussed in comparison to a priori predictions based on an analysis of how children might use orientation information when performing mental rotation tasks.

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Forty children between ages 6 and 8 were administered a set of spatial perspective tasks. On half of the items, children responded by rotating a duplicate of the target display; on the remainder, children reconstructed the displays to correspond to a perspective view. The displays differed as to whether they contained marked or unmarked objects. On the basis of an information-processing analysis of these tasks, we predicted that the response-type variables and stimulus variables would interact in known ways. Analysis of variance results revealed a good fit with the hypothesized outcomes. Main effects were detected for age, which favored older children, and for display, which favored unmarked objects; the rotation task proved easier. Significant interactions revealed that task demands increasing task difficulty were more problematic in the construction task than in the rotation task, as predicted.