Embodied Mental Rotation - Does It Affect Postural Stability?

The effect of different human body part stimuli in mental rotation tasks (MRTs) on postural stability was investigated in two dual-task experiments. There were significant differences within egocentric MRTs (Experiment 1, N = 46): Hand and foot stimuli tended to cause more body sway than whole-body figures and showed increased body sway for higher rotation angles in the MRTs. In object-based MRTs (Experiment 2, N = 109) different stimuli did not evoke different levels of body sway, but higher rotation angles led to higher body sway. Both experiments showed a stabilizing effect of MRTs compared to the control condition. Exploratorily analyses identified reaction time in MRTs as a significant predictor of body sway. The results suggest a heterogeneous impact of mental rotation on postural stability.