Open AccessDevelopmental Changes in Mental Rotation: A Dissociation Between Object-Based and Egocentric Transformations
Author(s) -
Sandra Kaltner,
Petra Jansen
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
advances in cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.507
H-Index - 31
ISSN - 1895-1171
DOI - 10.5709/acp-0187-y
Subject(s) - mental rotation , dissociation (chemistry) , psychology , cognition , perspective (graphical) , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , working memory , object (grammar) , computer science , artificial intelligence , psychiatry , chemistry
The present study was conducted to investigate developmental changes of mental rotation performance. We compared children, adults, and older adults regarding their performance in object-based and egocentric transformations. Both children and older adults showed higher overall reaction times compared to adults. Results were interpreted against the background of impaired working memory capacity in both children and older adults. Since mental changes in working memory are mediated by age differences in cognitive processing speed, cognitive speed is supposed to be the underlying factor. Regarding both types of transformations, an advantage of object-based human figures over egocentric human figures was only found for children, which led us tentatively propose that children show deficits in perspective taking compared to adults and the elderly.