From Psy3241

Mental rotation tasks access the degree to which a participant can mentally rotate two and three dimensional objects. They were first used in 1971 in cognitive experiments by Shepard & Metzler.

Mental rotation usually takes place in the right cerebral hemisphere, in the areas where perception also occurs.

Most research suggests that people take longer to make their judgments as the angular disparity between the two figures in the task increases. In other words, a figure that needs to be rotated 120 degrees to bring it back to the orientation of the first drawing takes longer to judge than one needing only 60 degrees of rotation. Thus, judgments were fastest at 0 degree rotation and slowest at 180 degrees. (Example pictured above)

Mental rotation tasks are used in neuropsychology to test if the tasks do in fact utilize the right hemisphere of the brain. For example in studies by Deutsch et. al (1988) participants were asked to identify which hand a cartoon man was holding the ball in. The cartoon man was rotated to various angles. Participants with right hemisphere damage were unable to perform this task( Stirling, 175).