Investigation of a Mental Rotation Task with School-Age Children

Abstract

Mental rotation skills were investigated with a number of pediatric populations. The measure utilized was developed by Thurstone and involves mental rotation of letters/words, objects, and figures. The first study investigated the construct validity of the mental rotation task. The results indicated that the test assessed a distinct construct, which focused on visual integrative functions. The second study examined differences on the mental rotation test between academically average and academically dysfunctional children. The results yielded significant differences on the overall measure. The third study investigated differences among normal, attention deficit disorder, and neurological dysfunction children. Significant results again were obtained; the normals showed higher performance than the attention deficit and neurological dysfunctional children. The overall results of these investigations support the clinical utility of the mental rotation task. Differential patterns within the measure also were noted across the pediatric groups.