An Information-processing Analysis of Children's Accuracy in Predicting the Appearance of Rotated Stimuli

Rosser, Rosemary A.; Ensing, Sally Stevens; Glider, Peggy; Lane, Suzanne

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1984.tb03915.x

Cited by 16 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Even adults may not recognize an orientation-free feature created by inverting part of a larger figure (Takano, 1989). Rosser, Ensing, Glider and Lane (1984) found that children's mental rotation ability was strongly influenced by both the number and location of orientationbound features. Children were unable to perform better than chance when stimuli lacked external orientationbound features.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Children's performance in mental rotation tasks: orientation‐free features flatten the slope

Perrucci

Agnoli

Albiero

2008

Developmental Science

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Studies of the development of mental rotation have yielded conflicting results, apparently because different mental rotation tasks draw on different cognitive abilities. Children may compare two stimuli at different orientations without mental rotation if the stimuli contain orientation-free features. Two groups of children (78 6-year-olds and 92 8-year-olds) participated in an experiment investigating development of the ability to mentally rotate and the ability to recognize and use orientation-free features. Children compared two stimuli, one upright and one rotated, and responded as quickly as possible indicating whether the stimuli were the same or different. The stimuli were either two panda bears or two ice-cream cones with three scoops of ice-cream of different colors. The panda bears were either identical or mirror images. The cones were either identical, mirror images, or non-mirror images. Response times increased linearly as a function of the angle of orientation when stimuli were the same and when the stimuli were mirror images. But response times were much less dependent on angle of orientation for non-mirror image stimuli. Children as young as 6 years recognized orientation-free stimulus features and responded without mentally rotating when the task permitted this strategy.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Children's performance in mental rotation tasks: orientation‐free features flatten the slope

Perrucci

Agnoli

Albiero

2008

Developmental Science

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“…Superficially, the male advantage in the MRT seems to be nearly universal: it has been observed in multiple cultures throughout the world [77], [78] and can be observed in children as young as five using an age-appropriate test of mental rotation [79]. However, there is also evidence to suggest that the male advantage on the MRT is nuanced.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental Rotational Ability Is Correlated with Spatial but Not Verbal Working Memory Performance and P300 Amplitude in Males

et al. 2013

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This study investigated how both sex and individual differences in a mental rotation test (MRT) influence performance on working memory (WM). To identify the neural substrate supporting these differences, brain electrical activity was measured using the event-related potential technique. No significant sex differences were observed in a test of verbal WM, however males were significantly faster than females to respond to probe stimuli in a test of spatial WM. This difference was no longer significant after controlling for differences in MRT score, suggesting that rotational ability mediates performance in the spatial memory task for both sexes. A posterior P300 was observed in both tasks as participants encoded information into memory, however the amplitude of the P300 correlated with RT in the spatial task but not in the verbal task. Individual differences in the MRT also correlated with RT and with the amplitude of the P300, but again only in the spatial task. After splitting the analysis by sex, partial correlations controlling for MRT revealed that for males, individual differences in rotational ability completely mediated the correlation between the P300 and RT in the spatial task. This mediating effect was not observed for the female participants. The results therefore suggest a relatively stronger association in males between innate mental rotational ability, spatial memory performance, and brain electrophysiological processes supporting spatial memory.

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“…Terlecki, Newcombe & Little, 2008;Voyer, Voyer & Bryden, 1995). This so-called male advantage emerges early in development, with sex differences documented in preschoolers (Levine, Huttenlocher, Taylor & Langrock, 1999;Rosser Ensing, Glider & Lane, 1984) and even infancy (Moore & Johnson, 2008;Quinn & Liben, 2008). While early-developing sex differences could certainly reflect innate mental rotation abilities (Geary, 1998;Kimura, 2000), even the earliest differences might be rooted in experiences with activities that promote mental rotation or preferences for particular problem-solving strategies (Casey, 1996;Spelke, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early sex differences in weighting geometric cues

Lourenco

Addy

Huttenlocher

et al. 2011

Developmental Science

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When geometric and non-geometric information are both available for specifying location, men have been shown to rely more heavily on geometry compared to women. To shed insight on the nature and developmental origins of this sex difference, we examined how 18- to 24-month-olds represented the geometry of a surrounding (rectangular) space when direct non-geometric information (i.e. a beacon) was also available for localizing a hidden object. Children were tested on a disorientation task with multiple phases. Across experiments, boys relied more heavily than girls on geometry to guide localization, as indicated by their errors during the initial phase of the task, and by their search choices following transformations that left only geometry available, or that, under limited conditions, created a conflict between beacon and geometry. Analyses of search times suggested that girls, like boys, had encoded geometry, and testing in a square space ruled out explanations concerned with motivational and methodological variables. Taken together, the findings provide evidence for an early sex difference in the weighting of geometry. This sex difference, we suggest, reflects subtle variation in how boys and girls approach the problem of combining multiple sources of location information.

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An Information-processing Analysis of Children's Accuracy in Predicting the Appearance of Rotated Stimuli

Cited by 16 publications

References 14 publications

Children's performance in mental rotation tasks: orientation‐free features flatten the slope

Children's performance in mental rotation tasks: orientation‐free features flatten the slope

Mental Rotational Ability Is Correlated with Spatial but Not Verbal Working Memory Performance and P300 Amplitude in Males

Early sex differences in weighting geometric cues

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