Conference turris::womannotes-v3

    What is "mental rotation"?
    
    Lorna
    

    I'm pretty good at the "mental rotation" thing, too, but I'm not sure
    it has much real-world application; most of the time if you want to
    know if part X fits into hole Y, you just pick it up and try it!  The
    fact that I am better at this trick without actually picking up object
    X may explain why I can stuff more dishes into a "full" dishwasher than
    my SO can.  Of course, if you work with three-D images for a living
    because you are designing car bodies or something, you now have a nice
    workstation which can rotate the images for you, error-free
    (hopefully!).
    
    /Charlotte

    
    re mental rotation
    
    	It helps when you're putting together jigsaw puzzles.
    
    							clb
    

    I'm extremely good at mental rotation -- I would brag about the
    scores I get except that as .3 and .4 point out, it's not much
    good for anything practical.  It helps if you do jigsaw puzzles,
    it helps load the car for vacation (I think I could pack an entire
    houseful of furniture into the back of a full-sized pickup), it
    helps stuff closets fuller than God meant them to be, and you
    don't want to look at my basement.  I don't think my life would be
    significantly poorer if I were completely lacking rotational
    ability.
    
    I'm told that there is a career in cargo loading in ships and
    trucks that this skill is valuable for, but that's probably been
    replaced by computers.  
    
    --bonnie

    Which gender is supposed to be better at mental rotation?
    
    If you're in one of the visual arts fields, I think it would come in
    handy.  A good artist can depict something from different angles,
    without having to see it in real life at the time.  Draw it from memory
    as it were.  I would think this would be a quite valuable ability.
    

    Mental rotation is one of the skills tested in the Medical School
    Admission Test.  It's pretty important if one is to become a surgeon.

 I think "mental rotation" is shorthand for the ability to mentally manipulate
 2 or 3 dimensional shapes (or spatial relationships)  as abstract geometrical
 entities (though I haven't read the article, which sounds interesting). 
 Quite different from skill at visualizing how something "looks" from
 different angles, in an artistic sense.  I, for example, am good at the
 former, lousy at the latter.  I can't see why surgeons would need it for much
 of what they do.  But it is useful for lots beyond jigsaw puzzles.  It is
 probably vital to architects, to most athletes, and  (to take a timely
 example) to fighter pilots, for example.  The traditional notion has been
 that males developed this because they were the hunters in early
 hunter/gatherer societies.
 
 		- Bruce

You mean I coulda been a surgeon or an architect?!?!?!

Sheesh, nobody ever told me that!

I think I'm about to get really mad at the high school guidance counsellor
who told me it didn't mean anything . . . even after I asked why they
tested for it if it didn't mean anything . . . because I think I just
realized that what she meant was that "it's not useful for any fields
a *girl* might be interested in."

--bonnie

    Bonnie -
    
    You got it.  Also useful for several different types of engineering,
    including ME, CE, and whatever the shorthand is for petroleum engineers
    (the guys out in the field figuring out what's down in the ground).
    
    Discovered all this when my son tested 99% percentile high in this
    particular skill.
    
    Alison

        re .-1   -< Go ahead, get mad >-
        
        Don't get mad...get even.
        
        Dan

    re .-1  -< Don't get mad...get even. >-
    
    Don't get even...get ahead.
    
    -jc

Wow! Somebody's finally explained to me why I couldn't learn to tie knots in
rock climbing class.

Having excellent "mental rotation" is good for being able to tie a bowline on a
coil with one hand while you're standing in a shower. (That's what my rock
climbing teacher--a woman--told me I should be able to do.)

Well, I couldn't tie a bowline on a coil with two hands after 20 minutes of
practice.

In the mountaineering class I took, most people had more trouble with
navigation--which involves only two dimensions--than with knot tying.

Vicki Meagher

    I can teach you how to tie a bowline on a coil - but you don't need to
    know that for rock climbing. For rock climbing you only HAVE to know
    one knot - the figure eight - and I can teach that to anyone in under
    ten minutes.
    
    You want to be able to tie your knots in pitch blackness in a driving
    rain while hypothermic, over and over again. Your life may depend on
    it. That's why you want to learn only one knot and engrave it on your
    brain. You want to be able to tie it with your eyes closed when your
    effective IQ is 60.
    
    That doesn't require spatial visualizatio skills, that just requires a
    certain minimum of manual dexterity plus a certain minimum of
    kinesthetic sense. I'm afraid that I don't hold your instructor's
    teaching methods in very high esteem...
    
    	-- Charles
    

    FWIW...
    
    There is a section on the standard IQ test on "spatial ability" one
    part of which is mental rotation. I am horrible at that.  When I was in
    1st grade I took and IQ test and came out retarded (not sure what the
    formal word is) in that area; ie: IQ < 90.  They tried to put me in a
    special needs class, but, thanks to my mother being an education and
    child psychology specialist, she was able to stop them.
    
    (Nothing quicker guarantees that a child will develop special needs
    than putting hir in a special needs class.)
    
    D!

And here I thought being able to visualise "rotation" was so people would be
able to picture the positions I was suggesting they assume. Go figure....liesl

    For me spacial skills (rotation) are very useful.  I helps me visulize
    a room with furniture rearranged or an empty kitchen with new cabinetes
    yet to be installed.  I think object wise in 3d form, Yet rotating an
    object in my head eludes me!  I think that's because I have to know
    whats around the corner and it's relationship to the other sides.
    
    I'm not sure that skill is particularly gender related at least based
    on genetics alone.  The idea that it shows up as gender related in
    tests may indicate differences in the inculturation on boys and girls.
    It also point out differences in how individuals visualize and 
    conceptualize things around them, the applied vs abstract.
    
    Allison
    
    
    

  Re: .18

  Allison, I think you may have solved one of the Mysteries of the Ages.  If 
  there really is a gender gap when it comes to spatial visualization, that
  may explain why some women (my spouse Alison in particular) every so often 
  ask that the furniture be rearranged.  

  I've never seen any point in it and until now have always attributed it
  to the discomfort Alison obviously feels when she sees me sitting 
  comfortably with nothing important to do.  But your interpretation
  makes me wonder whether it is a question of needing to see the new 
  arrangement in "real life" before she can decide whether she likes it.

  JP