Abstract
BACKGROUND: A detail of previous studies on mental rotation, which has not received any attention so far, relates to the testing situation of the participants. In nearly every study, participants were tested in a sitting posture (and not standing). However, when considering embodied cognition approaches on mental processes, participants may not be able to fully exploit these processes when performing mental rotation tasks in a sitting posture.
 AIM: Therefore, the aim of the present study is to examine the potential influence of two different postures (sitting vs. standing), when solving mental body rotation tasks.
 METHOD: Sixteen participants (6 females) were tested in two mental body-rotation tasks (MBRT), requiring either an object-based spatial transformation (based on a same-different judgment) or an egocentric transformation (based on a left-right judgment) in a sitting and in a standing posture. Reaction times and response errors were analysed in two three-way ANOVAs, with the factors orientation, task, and posture.
 RESULTS: Results revealed an effect of orientation and task, indicating that participants performed better for egocentric than for object-based transformations. However, there was no effect of posture.
 CONCLUSION: The different dynamics of postural control during sitting and standing do not induce different embodiment effects on mental rotation.
Highlights
The mental rotation task (MRT) by Shepard and Metzler[1] is a widely used paradigm to test people’s visual spatial abilities in cognitive psychology
In the standard MRT, two pictures of three-dimensional objects are shown side-by-side, whereupon one picture serves as a reference image and is presented in an upright position and the other picture is displayed at various orientations
The present study investigates the mental rotation of[1] human bodies in an extension of the standard MRT by Shepard and Metzler,[1] which is called the mental body-rotation task (MBRT).[9]
Summary
The mental rotation task (MRT) by Shepard and Metzler[1] is a widely used paradigm to test people’s visual spatial abilities in cognitive psychology. Participants’ task is to decide if the two pictures depict the same or different objects (i.e., same-different judgment), regardless of the differences in orientation.[1] Besides this classical MRT, previous studies have used a variety of different stimuli to examine the mental rotation skills using the psychometric testing. AIM: the aim of the present study is to examine the potential influence of two different postures (sitting vs standing), when solving mental body rotation tasks. METHOD: Sixteen participants (6 females) were tested in two mental body-rotation tasks (MBRT), requiring either an object-based spatial transformation (based on a same-different judgment) or an egocentric transformation (based on a left-right judgment) in a sitting and in a standing posture. CONCLUSION: The different dynamics of postural control during sitting and standing do not induce different embodiment effects on mental rotation
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