Abstract
Although mental rotation is a core component of scientific reasoning, little is known about its underlying mechanisms. For instance, how much visual information can someone rotate at once? We asked participants to rotate a simple multipart shape, requiring them to maintain attachments between features and moving parts. The capacity of this aspect of mental rotation was strikingly low: Only one feature could remain attached to one part. Behavioral and eye-tracking data showed that this single feature remained “glued” via a singular focus of attention, typically on the object’s top. We argue that the architecture of the human visual system is not suited for keeping multiple features attached to multiple parts during mental rotation. Such measurement of capacity limits may prove to be a critical step in dissecting the suite of visuospatial tools involved in mental rotation, leading to insights for improvement of pedagogy in science-education contexts.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1241-1251 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Psychological Science |
Volume | 26 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 7 2015 |
Funding
This work was funded by National Science Foundation Grants BCS-1056730 and SBE-0541957 (to S. L. Franconeri) and by National Institutes of Health Grant T32 NS047987 (to Y. Xu).
Keywords
- attention
- capacity
- eye tracking
- mental rotation
- selection
- tracking
- visual working memory
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Psychology