Mental rotation training

The short answer

Mental rotation is turning an object in your head to see how it would look from another angle.

You use it when you check whether a piece will fit, read a map upside down, or picture how furniture would sit in a room.

It is one of the most studied skills in psychology, and good spatial skills strongly predict success in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

The good news is that it improves with practice, and the gains tend to last. Try three puzzles to see how it feels.

What mental rotation is

In 1971, Roger Shepard and Jacqueline Metzler showed people pairs of drawings of 3D shapes made from cubes, like the ones in the puzzle above. Their study asked one question each time: is this the same shape, turned, or a different one?

The more one shape was turned away from the other, the longer people took to answer. The time rose in a straight line with the angle, at roughly 60 degrees a second.

That straight line was the discovery. It suggested people really do turn a picture in their heads, step by step, the way you would turn a real object in your hands.

Why mirror images?

In Shepard and Metzler's study, the different shapes were mirror images of each other, like a left and a right hand.

That is what makes the task hard. You can't spot the difference from any one part of the shape. You have to hold the whole thing in mind and turn it.

How it is measured

In 1978, Steven Vandenberg and Allan Kuse turned the task into a pen-and-paper test, the Mental Rotations Test. Versions of it are still widely used to measure spatial ability.

Each question shows a target shape and four options. You pick the two that are the target turned, and skip the two that are mirror images or different shapes.

Mental rotation and STEM

Spatial ability, the family of skills mental rotation belongs to, has a long track record of predicting who thrives in science and engineering.

400,000 students, 11 years later

Wai, Lubinski and Benbow (2009) drew on Project Talent, a study that tested around 400,000 US high school students and checked in with them again 11 years after they left school.

Strong spatial ability stood out among the people who went on to earn advanced degrees and work in STEM.

The link grew stronger with each degree. Of the people who went on to a STEM PhD, 45% had been in the top 4% for spatial ability in high school, and fewer than 1 in 10 had been outside the top quarter.

From age 13 to patents

Kell and colleagues (2013) followed 563 very able 13-year-olds for more than 30 years.

Their maths and verbal scores at 13 explained about 11% of the differences in who later earned patents and published research. Adding spatial ability explained about 8% more.

+7.6%Extra variation in later patents and publications explained by spatial ability at age 13, on top of maths and verbal scores.

In other words, spatial ability told the researchers something about future innovators that the maths and verbal tests missed.

Engineering students

For years, Sheryl Sorby and her colleagues tested first-year engineering students and offered a spatial skills course to those who scored low.

The students' spatial scores rose after the course. Low scorers who took it were also more likely to stay in engineering than those who didn't, especially women.

It starts early

The link shows up even in young children. In a study of 102 three-year-olds, skill at copying block models was linked to early maths skills, even after other factors were taken into account.

Can you train it?

Yes. This is where spatial ability really stands out.

Many brain skills are hard to change with practice. Spatial skills respond well, and the gains tend to stick.

The big review

Uttal and colleagues (2013) combined the results of 217 spatial training studies.

On average, training improved spatial skill by about half a standard deviation compared with control groups.

0.47Average training effect (Hedges' g) across 217 spatial training studies. Effects around 0.5 are usually called medium.

Two more findings make this especially encouraging.

The gains lasted: they held up just as well when people were tested again later. And they spread: training on one spatial task improved other spatial tasks that people never practised.

Practice that sticks

In a study by Terlecki, Newcombe and Little (2008), students practised either by retaking a mental rotation test or by playing Tetris.

Both groups made large gains in mental rotation, and the gains were still there several months later.

Men tended to improve faster at first. Women kept improving for longer. Practice helped everyone.

What about maths?

Hawes, Gilligan-Lee and Mix (2022) pulled together 29 studies that tested whether spatial training helps with maths.

Training boosted spatial skills clearly, and gave maths a smaller but real boost too. The maths gains were bigger in older learners and for maths that looked most like the spatial training.

Training that used real objects, such as blocks, did better than training done only on a screen. So the best plan is to do both: practise on screen, and build real things too.

What happens in the brain

A review of brain-imaging studies found that mental rotation reliably switches on the intraparietal sulcus, a groove in the parietal lobe near the top and back of the head.

This area holds maps of space, and its activity changes with how far a shape has to turn. That fits Shepard and Metzler's idea that people turn a mental picture rather than follow a rule.

Areas that plan movement also join in, especially when people imagine turning the object with their hands. Mental rotation seems to borrow from the same systems we use to handle real objects.

How it compares to other brain training

Most brain training works on attention or memory. Mental rotation works on a different system: how you picture and move things in space.

That makes it a good partner for the others. Training spatial skill adds something that memory and reasoning games don't cover.

Spatial training also has some of the strongest evidence of any type. Our guide to whether brain training works compares them all.

How to practise

Training in these studies ranged from a few sessions to a full course, and the gains held up over time. There's no agreed best dose, so these are our suggestions.

Keep climbing

Start with small shapes and simple turns, then work up to bigger shapes and harder turns.

A level you have mastered stops being a workout. The gains come from staying just past what feels easy.

Accuracy before speed

Take the time to really turn the shape in your head. Speed comes on its own as the turns start to feel natural.

When you get one wrong, look again at the two shapes and find the part that gives the mirror image away.

Build real things too

In the maths review, training with real objects gave bigger maths gains than training on a screen.

Building with blocks, doing 3D puzzles or flat-pack furniture, and sketching objects from different sides all give your spatial skills extra practice.

How Blocks does it

Blocks is Neurobuff's mental rotation game. It takes the classic test a step further.

You see a 3D structure built from cubes. A cue shows you how it will be turned. Then you rebuild it from the new angle, cube by cube, on an empty grid.

Rebuilding a shape asks for more than spotting a match. You have to turn the whole structure in your head and hold it there while you place each cube.

Difficulty adapts to you. Blocks watches how accurately you rebuild each structure and sets the next one from that, moving you on to bigger and more complex shapes as you improve.

Blocks is one of five training games in Neurobuff. Start training to play the full game.

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