Mental Rotation in Sports A Comparison of the Mental Rotation of Two-Dimensional Timeout Displays in Basketball and the Classical Mental Rotation Test (MRT) of Three-Dimensional Objects

This study further validates the sport-specific Mental Rotation Test Basketball (MRT-BB) in which participants solve 24 items regarding basketball plays. The task of each item consists of comparing four alternative stimuli with a criterion stimulus and identifying the two correct alternatives. A total of 203 participants (101 females) took part in this experiment in which they solved the original MRT and the MRT-BB. The results replicate the findings of Weigelt and Memmert (2021). The number of items attempted declined toward the end of each set, with participants solving more items in the second set and men outperforming women. While participants solved more items on the MRT-BB, performance in both tests was positively correlated. Our replication of the previous results supports the validity of the MRT-BB. The correlation supports the notion that the mental rotation of the sport-specific stimuli is based on more general mental rotation skills.