A New Set of Three-Dimensional Shapes for Investigating Mental Rotation Processes: Validation Data and Stimulus Set

Abstract

Mental rotation is one of the most influential paradigms in the history of cognitive psychology. In this paper, we present a new set of validated mental rotation stimuli to be used freely by the scientific community. Three-dimensional visual rendering software was employed to generate a total of 384 realistic-looking mental rotation stimuli with shading and foreshortening depth cues. Each stimulus was composed of two pictures: a baseline object and a target object, placed side by side, which can be aligned by means of a rotation around the vertical axis in half of the stimuli but not in the other half. Behavioral data (N=54, freely available) based on these stimuli exhibited the typical linear increase in response times and error rates with angular disparity, validating the stimulus set. This set of stimuli is especially useful for studies where it is necessary to avoid stimulus repetition, such as training studies.