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Reliabilities of Mental Rotation Tasks: Limits to the Assessment of Individual Differences
Joint Authors
Hirschfeld, Gerrit
Thielsch, Meinald T.
Zernikow, Boris
Source
Issue
Vol. 2013, Issue 2013 (31 Dec. 2013), pp.1-7, 7 p.
Publisher
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Publication Date
2013-09-30
Country of Publication
Egypt
No. of Pages
7
Main Subjects
Abstract EN
Mental rotation tasks with objects and body parts as targets are widely used in cognitive neuropsychology.
Even though these tasks are well established to study between-groups differences, the reliability on an individual level is largely unknown.
We present a systematic study on the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of individual differences in mental rotation tasks comparing different target types and orders of presentations.
In total n=99 participants (n=63 for the retest) completed the mental rotation tasks with hands, feet, faces, and cars as targets.
Different target types were presented in either randomly mixed blocks or blocks of homogeneous targets.
Across all target types, the consistency (split-half reliability) and stability (test-retest reliabilities) were good or acceptable both for intercepts and slopes.
At the level of individual targets, only intercepts showed acceptable reliabilities.
Blocked presentations resulted in significantly faster and numerically more consistent and stable responses.
Mental rotation tasks—especially in blocked variants—can be used to reliably assess individual differences in global processing speed.
However, the assessment of the theoretically important slope parameter for individual targets requires further adaptations to mental rotation tests.
American Psychological Association (APA)
Hirschfeld, Gerrit& Thielsch, Meinald T.& Zernikow, Boris. 2013. Reliabilities of Mental Rotation Tasks: Limits to the Assessment of Individual Differences. BioMed Research International،Vol. 2013, no. 2013, pp.1-7.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1004046
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Hirschfeld, Gerrit…[et al.]. Reliabilities of Mental Rotation Tasks: Limits to the Assessment of Individual Differences. BioMed Research International No. 2013 (2013), pp.1-7.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1004046
American Medical Association (AMA)
Hirschfeld, Gerrit& Thielsch, Meinald T.& Zernikow, Boris. Reliabilities of Mental Rotation Tasks: Limits to the Assessment of Individual Differences. BioMed Research International. 2013. Vol. 2013, no. 2013, pp.1-7.
https://search.emarefa.net/detail/BIM-1004046
Data Type
Journal Articles
Language
English
Notes
Includes bibliographical references
Record ID
BIM-1004046