Mental Processes during a Quadrilateral Folding Task

Science and engineering students must learn to rotate mentally complex objects in order fully to understand much of the subject matter in standard courses. These mental rotation tasks are surprisingly difficult for a large number of such students. The performance of science and engineering students in a particularly difficult mental rotation task is being analyzed for the purpose of discovering the processes undertaken in completing such a task. Specifically, a quadrilateral folding experiment conducted by Massironi and Luccio (1989) was replicated, with stimulus modifications, to test a new explanation of why students have difficulty and to determine whether Massironi and Luccio’s results can be replicated using engineering and science students. It was expected that subjects would perform better when provided stimuli that depict a rigid joint between the quadrilateral and the rotational axis, causing subjects to place more focus on this angle and maintain it throughout the rotation. This would provide insight into the pedagogical innovations in the areas of engineering education related to mental rotation and visualization in three dimensions that might improve performance in standard coursework. This research is part of the ongoing research being conducted by the departments of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Psychology, and Computer Science in the area of visualization in three dimensions and psychometrics.