An investigation of mental rotation in infancy using change detection

Aaron G Beckner; Annika T Voss; Lindsey Phillips; Kathryn King; Marianella Casasola; Lisa M Oakes

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2023.101834

An investigation of mental rotation in infancy using change detection

Infant Behav Dev. 2023 May:71:101834. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2023.101834. Epub 2023 Apr 18.

Authors

Aaron G Beckner¹, Annika T Voss², Lindsey Phillips³, Kathryn King³, Marianella Casasola⁴, Lisa M Oakes⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Human Ecology, Cornell University, USA. Electronic address: agb222@cornell.edu.
² Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, USA.
³ Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, USA.
⁴ School of Human Ecology, Cornell University, USA.
⁵ Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, USA; Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, USA.

PMID: 37080014
DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2023.101834

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to examine mental rotation in 6- to 12-month-old infants (N = 166) using a change detection task. These experiments were replications of Lauer and Lourenco (Lauer et al., 2015; Lauer & Lourenco, 2016), using identical stimuli and variations of their procedure, including an exact replication conducted in a laboratory setting (Experiment 1), and an online assessment using Lookit (Scott et al.,2017; Scott & Schulz, 2017) (Experiment 2). Both experiments failed to replicate the results of the original study; in neither experiment did infants' behavior provide evidence that they mentally rotated the object. Results are discussed in terms of the robustness of mental rotation in infancy and about limits in our experimental procedures for uncovering perceptual and cognitive abilities in infants.

Keywords: Infancy; Mental rotation; Sex differences; Spatial cognition; Visual attention.

MeSH terms

Cognition*
Humans
Infant
Rotation
Spatial Processing*