DEVELOPMENTAL EVIDENCE FOR A DISSOCIATION BETWEEN MENTAL ROTATION ANDROTATED OBJECT RECOGNITION

This paper attempts to address the issues of the role of mental rotati on as an abstracted process within object recognition systems. Adult r ecognition systems are able to recognize objects which are presented i n unexpected or unconventional positions and some authors have suggest ed that the underlying processes involved in accomplishing this are si milar to those which are tapped in abstract mental rotation tasks cond ucted in the psychology lab. This paper attempts to address the develo pmental aspect of the problem by looking at whether mental rotation sk ills have become established at a time when recognition of objects pla ced at unconventional angles has been attained. The results showed tha t scores in mental rotation and in rotated object recognition are not correlated in young children or in the elderly. As a consequence, it a ppears that mental rotation skills are not yet fully developed and hav e begun to deteriorate at an age when rotated object recognition is pr eserved.