Maintaining Kinematic Constraints when Performing Mental Rotations About a Fixed Axis: Implications for Instruction and Displays

Abstract

Visually imagining the rotation of a solid object around an axis is central to problem solving in science, mathematics and engineering. Surprisingly, participants can find even very simple rotations quite difficult. There have been a number of different explanations for why participants have the difficulties they do. They include the role of experience and the effect of perceptual organization on the participant's choice of responses. We hypothesize that difficult rotations are made easier when individuals are provided better information about kinematic constraints inherent in the object that is being mentally transformed. In an experiment reported here, we test the above hypothesis. Our results showed that when we changed the stimulus used in a classic rotation task to one which more clearly resembled a rigid, solid object in the real world, the overall error rate was decreased. We discuss the implications for the representation on displays of three dimensional objects which must be rotated.