title: Developmental Changes in Mental Rotation: A Dissociation Between Object-Based and Egocentric Transformations.
abstract: The present study was conducted to investigate developmental changes of mental rotation performance. We compared children, adults, and older adults regarding their performance in object-based and egocentric transformations. Both children and older adults showed higher overall reaction times compared to adults. Results were interpreted against the background of impaired working memory capacity in both children and older adults. Since mental changes in working memory are mediated by age differences in cognitive processing speed, cognitive speed is supposed to be the underlying factor. Regarding both types of transformations, an advantage of object-based human figures over egocentric human figures was only found for children, which led us tentatively propose that children show deficits in perspective taking compared to adults and the elderly.
authors: Department of Sport Science, University of Regensburg, Germany.
authors: Sandra
authors: S
authors: Kaltner
authors: Department of Sport Science, University of Regensburg, Germany.
authors: Petra
authors: P
authors: Jansen
keywords: developmental changes; mental rotation; object-based and egocentric transformations; response inhibition