title: Individual differences in mental rotation: piecemeal versus holistic processing.
abstract: Two experiments tested the hypothesis that imagery ability and figural complexity interact to affect the choice of mental rotation strategies. Participants performed the <citationReference id="cr19-1" rid="c19">Shepard and Metzler (1971)</citationReference> mental rotation task. On half of the trials, the 3-D figures were manipulated to create "fragmented" figures, with some cubes missing. Good imagers were less accurate and had longer response times on fragmented figures than on complete figures. Poor imagers performed similarly on fragmented and complete figures. These results suggest that good imagers use holistic mental rotation strategies by default, but switch to alternative strategies depending on task demands, whereas poor imagers are less flexible and use piecemeal strategies regardless of the task demands.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90094, USA. khooshabeh@ict.usc.edu
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Khooshabeh
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hegarty
authors.forename: Thomas F
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Shipley
mesh_terms: D003867:Depth Perception; D005556:Form Perception; D006694:Holistic Health; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012399:Rotation; D013028:Space Perception