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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Movement Science
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1355381
This article is part of the Research Topic Cognitive and Motor Skills in Sports View all 15 articles

Mental Rotation abilities of gymnasts and soccer players: A comparison of egocentric and object-based transformations. An exploratory and preliminary study

Provisionally accepted
Thomas J. Klotzbier Thomas J. Klotzbier 1,2*Nadja Schott Nadja Schott 1,2
  • 1 University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
  • 2 Institute of Sport and Exercise Science, Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background and Objectives. The experience obtained from motor expertise may contribute to and enhance the development of particular visuo-spatial abilities.Motor expertise is an essential part of visual perception. This exploratory and preliminary study compares the response times of a mental rotation task with egocentric and object-based transformation instructions between soccer players of varying performance levels and gymnasts. Methods. Fifty-six male participants (all male) participated in the study and were grouped based on their sports experience. Soccer-specific novices (SS-N: n = 19; age = 15.9 ± 0.87), soccer-specific experts (SS-E: n = 17; age = 16.4 ± 0.70), gymnastic-specific experts (GS-E: n = 10; age = 16.6 ± 1.71), and gymnastic-specific novices (GS-N: n = 10; age = 16.0 ± 1.63) were recruited to perform a perceptual task (recognition of soccer-specific poses) and mental rotation tasks with different stimuli (soccer-specific poses, cubes, line-drawings of hands, letters). Results. During the perceptual task with instructions on egocentric transformation and soccer-specific poses, we observed that gymnasts had longer response times than soccer players. Our findings also suggest that experts correctly identified most of the poses in terms of accuracy. In the mental rotation task with object-based transformation, gymnasts processed all stimuli, even the soccer-specific poses, more accurately than both soccer groups. Conclusions. Our results suggest that gymnasts' motor expertise plays a role in their performance on mental rotation tasks involving both egocentric and object-based transformations, regardless of the stimuli presented.

    Keywords: mental rotation, Soccer players, gymnasts, perceptual task, motor expertise, Spatial Ability

    Received: 13 Dec 2023; Accepted: 16 May 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Klotzbier and Schott. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Thomas J. Klotzbier, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.