Ecological Aspects of Mental Rotation Around the Vertical and Horizontal Axis

Rotation of both natural and man-made objects most commonly requires rotation around the vertical rather than the horizontal axis because it is relatively rare that we need to rotate, e.g., trees, mountains, chairs or vehicles around their horizontal axis in order to match images to their canonical orientation. Waszak, Drewing, and Mausfeld (2005) demonstrated the importance of a gravitationally defined vertical axis and the visual context within which objects occur, when performing mental rotations. We extended their findings in a between-subject design by asking 406 subjects to rotate wireframe cube figures around either the vertical axis or around the horizontal axis. Both male and female subjects performed significantly better when rotating objects around the vertical axis. Males performed better than females in both conditions, and there was no interaction between axis of rotation and sex.