Learn about cognition and mental self-rotation with these quick brain teasers

___ Mental self-rotation is the cognitive skill to imagine yourself in space and to imagine yourself moving — such as when you reading a map or finding your car in the parking lot. Imagine that you plan to go to a new Whole Foods store. You wonder whether going North on Big Bend Avenue you would have to make a right or a left turn onto Forsyth Blvd to get to Whole Foods. You then look at the map that your spouse has laid out on the table. It turns out that the map is upside down so your perspective is not aligned with the one shown on the map (see Figure 1 below to the right, box A). How do you decide whether to turn left or right? – Figure 1 The map is upside down (A). The red dot represents your car’s position. Your goal is to go to Whole Foods (W). You can either perform an object rotation (B), that is imagine the map rotating, or a self rotation ©, that is imagine yourself at the red dot location. To align your perspective with the one showed on the map, you could imagine the map rotating until it is upright. This is shown at the top right corner of Figure 1 above (Box B). This is what psychologists call mental rotation of object. Another solution, which requires a higher degree of concentration, is to imagine viewing the map from the other side of the table. This is shown at the bottom right corner of Figure 1 above (Box C). Once you have imagined yourself on the other side of the table you can use your body coordinates and determine that you will h...
Source: SharpBrains - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Tags: Brain Teasers Cognitive Neuroscience Education & Lifelong Learning brain-teaser cognition mental-self-rotation Source Type: blogs