Developmental changes in mental rotation: A dissociation between object-based and egocentric transformations

Abstract

The present study was conducted to investigate developmental changes of mental rotation performance. We compared children, adults, and older adults regarding their performance in object-based and egocentric transformations. Both children and older adults showed higher overall reaction times compared to adults. Results were interpreted against the background of impaired working memory capacity in both children and older adults. Since mental changes in working memory are mediated by age differences in cognitive processing speed, cognitive speed is supposed to be the underlying factor. Regarding both types of transformations, an advantage of egocentric over object-based human figures was only found in adults which led us to tentatively propose that children and older adults show deficits in perspective taking compared to adults.