The Magical Number Four in Children's Mental Rotation of Cube Aggregates.

We investigated mental rotation in children by systematically varying the adult cube aggregate's set size, rotation angle, and picture/depth plane rotations in a new test. Eighty 4- to 11-year-old mainly middle-class children (British Indian and British African majority and white minority; 40 girls...

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Publicado en:Developmental Psychology Vol. 57; no. 2; pp. 211 - 227
Autores principales: Lütke, Nikolay, Lange-Küttner, Christiane
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: American Psychological Association Feb2021
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Feb2021
      vid: 57
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      pub: American Psychological Association
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        10.1037/dev0001139
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        atl: The Magical Number Four in Children's Mental Rotation of Cube Aggregates.
      aug:
        au:
          Lütke, Nikolay
          Lange-Küttner, Christiane
        affil: School of Social Sciences, Psychology, London Metropolitan University
      su:
        Age distribution
        Intelligence tests
        Sex distribution
        Psychosocial factors
        Task performance
        Children
        Cognitive testing
        Statistical correlation
        Mathematics
        Statistics
        Data analysis
      sug:
        subj:
          Age distribution
          Intelligence tests
          Sex distribution
          Psychosocial factors
          Task performance
          Children
          Cognitive testing
          Statistical correlation
          Mathematics
          Statistics
          Data analysis
      keyword:
        gestalt
        intelligence
        mental capacity
        mental rotation
        three-dimensional cube aggregates
        gestalt
        intelligence
        mental capacity
        mental rotation
        three-dimensional cube aggregates
      ab: We investigated mental rotation in children by systematically varying the adult cube aggregate's set size, rotation angle, and picture/depth plane rotations in a new test. Eighty 4- to 11-year-old mainly middle-class children (British Indian and British African majority and white minority; 40 girls and 40 boys) were assessed using the new matching-to-sample Colored Mental Rotation Test (CMRT) and, for comparison, the Raven Colored Progressive Matrices Test (RCPM). A high Cronbach's alpha of.94 and the Rasch model demonstrated item homogeneity of the CMRT. As expected, there were main effects of age showing increases in accuracy and of sex as boys outperformed girls. A main effect of set size showed that from age four until age 10 as four-cube aggregates proved to be the most economical three-dimensional (3D) object for mental rotation. Several higher-order interactions all involved four-cube aggregates, for example, 3D cube element protrusions had the largest effect in the four-cube-aggregate. We thus suggest that the magical number four (Cowan, 2001) as an attentional limit may also be valid in mental rotation and linked to the 'Good Gestalt' design of the four-cube aggregate. The cross-validation of CMRT with the RCPM showed high correlations increasing from.69 in 4- to 5-year-olds to.77 in 10- to 11-year-olds. Interestingly, 4- to 5-year-olds girls scored higher in the Raven test of nonverbal reasoning than in the CRMT scores with 3D cube aggregates demonstrating the particular complexity of 3D pictorial space.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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