Development of mental rotation in 3- to 5-year-old children
Section snippets
Participants
Sixty children participated, with 20 children (10 girls) in each of three age groups: 3-year-olds (mean age 42 months, range 41–44 months), 4-year-olds (mean age 54 months, range 52–56 months), and 5-year-olds (mean age 66 months, range 65–68 months). The mean age difference between boys and girls was no more than 6 days in any age group. Four additional children were tested but excluded from analyses: two 3-year-olds perseverated and chose the ghost in the same location on all trials, one
Participants
Forty children participated, with 20 children (10 girls) in each of two age groups: 4-year-olds (mean age 55 months, range 53–56 months), and 5-year-olds (mean age 66 months, range 65–68 months). The mean age difference between boys and girls was 10 days. One additional 4-year-old was tested but excluded from analyses because he perseverated and chose the ghost in the same location on all trials. The sample was recruited and tested as in Experiment 1.
Stimuli, procedure, and design
The ghost stimuli were printed on
General discussion
Results showed a clear developmental trend with a considerable increase in mental rotation abilities between 3 and 5 years of age. In Experiment 1, children were presented with mirror-image pairs of ghosts in different orientations and asked to choose the one that fit into a hole. The percentage of correct responses increased from 54% to 83%, and the number of individual children who performed above chance increased from 10% to 95% between 3 and 5 years of age. In Experiment 2, a paper version
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by research grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation #PBZH1-117012 and from the US National Science Foundation #SBE-0541957 and #SBE-1041707.
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