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 |
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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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