Unraveling children's mental rotation: insights from behavior and eye tracking

This study aims to examine mental rotation performance in children aged 5-15 years across varying rotational angles, and to elucidate the cognitive processing mechanisms and individual differences involved by integrating behavioral data, eye-movement metrics, and self-control capacity. Forty-one children participated in a mental rotation task featuring stimulus orientations of 60°, 120°, 180°, 240°, and 300°. Outcome measures included accuracy, reaction time, fixation duration, fixation count, and mean pupil diameter, complemented by assessments from the Multidimensional Self-Control Scale. Data were analyzed using the Friedman test and Spearman's correlation coefficients. Increasing rotation angles were associated with significant decreases in accuracy and increases in reaction time. Eye-tracking indicators-fixation duration, fixation count, and mean pupil diameter-showed consistent elevation, indicative of heightened cognitive load and adaptive changes in information processing strategies. Notably, impulse control exhibited negative correlations with fixation duration (R =  - 0.35) and mean pupil diameter (R =  - 0.31). The findings suggest that mental rotation performance is associated with not only spatial transformation skills but also cognitive control resources. Children exhibiting lower impulse control experienced greater cognitive load and reduced processing efficiency under demanding task conditions. Together, the evidence points toward an integrated view of mental rotation in children, linking spatial processing with self-regulatory capacity.