Moore David S, Johnson Scott P
Pitzer College and Claremont Graduate University, Los Angeles, CA 91711,USA.
Psychol Sci. 2008 Nov;19(11):1063-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02200.x.
A sex difference on mental-rotation tasks has been demonstrated repeatedly, but not in children less than 4 years of age. To demonstrate mental rotation in human infants, we habituated 5-month-old infants to an object revolving through a 240 degrees angle. In successive test trials, infants saw the habituation object or its mirror image revolving through a previously unseen 120 degrees angle. Only the male infants appeared to recognize the familiar object from the new perspective, a feat requiring mental rotation. These data provide evidence for a sex difference in mental rotation of an object through three-dimensional space, consistently seen in adult populations.
心理旋转任务中的性别差异已得到反复证实，但4岁以下儿童中未发现此差异。为了证明人类婴儿存在心理旋转能力，我们让5个月大的婴儿适应一个旋转240度角的物体。在后续测试中，婴儿看到的是适应阶段的物体或其镜像以之前未见过的120度角旋转。只有男婴似乎能从新视角识别出熟悉的物体，这一能力需要心理旋转。这些数据为物体在三维空间中的心理旋转存在性别差异提供了证据，这种差异在成年人群中一直存在。
