Mental Rotations in Children/Infants

• Spatial Ability: think about 3D things and draw conclusions.
• Men have better spatial ability, shown as young as 4 years old, but not yet in infants.
• Mental rotation is effected by gender differences quite a bit.
• A 4 month old can track, but mental rotation needs to deal with 3D objects, not 2D.
• They wanted to know, if the babies would habitualize the rotated object, that is they wouldn't see it as novel.
• Experiment recorded eye fixations and durations and saw either left or right parts of a mirrored object.
• In the habituation trials, the objects rotated. In the Test object, they switched between left and right.
• Novel object (mirrored image) - males looked at it longer - significant difference.
• Females saw them the same, females did not recognize familiar objects, males did.
• Maybe due to hormones (testosterone), or in the hemispheric differences.
• They also showed that 3-4 month old infants would have differences showing preference for the mirrored objet shows you have done the mental representation-rotation.
• familiarized trials, then preference trials.
• Males did better, even at 3-4 months.
• Social experience/influences may play a big role here.