Abstract
The present experiment examined whether the mental rotation ability of 9-month-old infants was related to their abilities to crawl and manually explore objects. Forty-eight 9-month-old infants were tested; half of them had been crawling for an average of 9.3 weeks. The infants were habituated to a video of a simplified Shepard–Metzler object rotating back and forth through a 240° angle around the longitudinal axis of the object. They were tested with videos of the same object rotating through a previously unseen 120° angle and with a mirror image of the display. All of the infants also participated in a manual object exploration task, in which they freely explored five toy blocks. The results showed that the crawlers looked significantly longer at the novel (mirror) object than at the familiar object, independent of their manual exploration scores. The non-crawlers looking times, in contrast, were influenced by the manual exploration scores. The infants who did not spontaneously explore the toy blocks tended to show a familiarity preference, whereas those who explored the toy blocks preferred to look at the novel object. Thus, all of the infants were able to master the mental rotation task but it seemed to be the most complex process for infants who had no crawling experience and who did not spontaneously explore objects.
Highlights
Mental rotation refers to the ability to rotate mental representations of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects (Linn and Petersen, 1985)
Recent research has suggested that sophisticated manual object explorations, including rotations, fingerings, and transfers of objects (Soska et al, 2010), and prior manual object experience might be associated with infant mental rotation ability (Möhring and Frick, in press)
The present study revealed that the mental rotation ability of 9month-old infants was related to their crawling ability and to their spontaneous willingness to explore objects in a sophisticated manner
Summary
Mental rotation refers to the ability to rotate mental representations of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects (Linn and Petersen, 1985). Recent research has suggested that sophisticated manual object explorations, including rotations, fingerings, and transfers of objects (Soska et al, 2010), and prior manual object experience might be associated with infant mental rotation ability (Möhring and Frick, in press). These studies did not address the question of whether a combination of both crawling and manual object exploration is related to infant mental rotation ability. We aimed to investigate if and how crawling and manual object exploration skills are related to the mental rotation abilities of infants
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