Human-body analogy improves mental rotation performance in people aged 86 to 97 years

Muto, Hiroyuki, Gondo, Yasuyuki, Inagaki, Hiroki, Masui, Yukie, Nakagawa, Takeshi, Ogawa, Madoka, Onoguchi, Wataru, Ishioka, Yoshiko, Numata, Keitaro and Yasumoto, Saori (2023) Human-body analogy improves mental rotation performance in people aged 86 to 97 years. Collabra: Psychology, 9 (1): 74785. pp. 1-14. ISSN 2474-7394

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Abstract

Mental rotation is a spatial ability allowing one to represent and rotate an object in one’s mind, and its performance declines with age. Given previous findings indicating that likening a to-be-rotated object to a human body improves mental rotation performance in young adults, we examined whether this human-body analogy would improve older adults’ mental rotation performance. We also tested whether the human-body analogy effect is age-dependent. In the present study, we analyzed data from 423 community-dwelling older adults (age range: 86–97 years; 219 men and 204 women) who answered two items of a paper-and-pencil mental rotation test: one on abstract cube objects (control condition) and one on cube objects with a human face (embodied condition). The results revealed that more participants correctly answered the item in the embodied condition (32.2%) compared to that in the control condition (19.6%), indicating that the human-body analogy is effective in an oldest-old population (i.e., people aged over 85 years). Notably, we found age differences in human-body analogy effects. While accuracy for mental rotation of abstract objects declined with age, accuracy for embodied objects was preserved with age. These findings suggest that the human-body analogy may prompt older adults to adopt a holistic, rather than a piecemeal, rotation strategy.

Item Type: Article
Keywords: Oldest-old | Aging | Body Analogy | Embodiment | Mental Imagery | Mental Rotation
Subjects: Social Sciences and humanities > Social Sciences > Social Sciences (General)
JGU School/Centre: Jindal School of Liberal Arts & Humanities
Depositing User: Amees Mohammad
Date Deposited: 09 May 2023 09:03
Last Modified: 21 May 2023 03:07
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.74785
URI: https://pure.jgu.edu.in/id/eprint/5966

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