Manual training of mental rotation in children

When deciding whether two stimuli rotated in space are identical or mirror reversed, subjects employ mental rotation to solve the task. In children mental rotation can be trained by extensive repetition of the task, but the improvement seems to rely on the retrieval of previously learned stimuli. We assumed that due to the close relation between mental and manual rotation in children a manual training should improve the mental rotation process itself. The manual training we developed indeed ameliorated mental rotation and the training effect was not limited to learned stimuli. While boys outperformed girls in the mental rotation test before the manual rotation training, we found no gender differences in the results of the manual rotation task.