MR Mental Rotation

This test distinguishes itself by using three-dimensional, multi- media test material for the recording of the spatial perception skill as well as by its scaling fairness due to the validity of the Rasch model.

Application
Mental Rotation is a Rasch homogenous computerized test for assessing respondents’ spatial perception skills. This is, in other words, the respondent’s ability to mentally picture and manipulate spatial content; the test was designed for adolescents from the age of 16 and adults.
Areas of use include: vocational, education and career counseling, as well as counseling in the context of university studies, personality development, skills assessment in psychological practice and in the clinical area (e.g. neurology and psychiatry). The MR can also be used for research purposes.

Theoretical Background
Psychometric research into spatial ability began at the start of the 20th century and was analyzed with relative precision for the first time thanks to the introduction of multiple factor analysis (Thurstone, 1931a,b). Shortly afterward, Thurstone established the existence of seven so-called primary factors of intelligence, of which one of them was spatial ability. Spatial ability research based on factor analysis led to the definition of a host of various spatial ability factors and factor-analysis based spatial perception tests. These were subject to criticism due to their homogeneousness and one-dimensionality. One-dimensionality (Rasch homogeneousness) has been proven for the Mental Rotation (MR) spatial perception test. This means that the same latent skill dimension is measured in all respondents.

Test Administration
After a general instruction phase and three practice examples, the test phase presents the respondents with a total of 20 items in sequence, one per screen, to be solved. The respondent has one minute to solve each item. It is not possible to go back and correct answers to items already given.

Scoring
The test score has been defined as the number of correctly solved items and is presented as a standardized value (percentile rank and t value). It describes the scope of the respondent’s spatial perception skills.

Reliability
Reliability in the sense of an internal consistency can be said to exist on the basis of the validity of the Rasch model. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) comes to .81.

Validity
Initial analysis based on correlation statistics points to the convergent and divergent validity of the MR.

Norms
A norm sample (total norm, and broken down by gender, age and education level) of N = 195 (104 men and 91 women; age span 16-73 years) is available. The data was collected in Vienna in 2003.