The Factor Structure for Mental Rotations of Three‐dimensional Structures Represented in Diagrams

Abstract

The purpose of the investigation is to determine the factor structure of tasks which require students to visualise how diagrams should be drawn to represent the effects of rotating three‐dimensional structures about the three Cartesian axes. Experiment I demonstrates that the factor analytic methodology can be used to distinguish between data corresponding to the two patterns which are of theoretical interest. Experiment II demonstrates that, for two samples of students, the items concerned with rotations about the X‐, Y‐ and Z‐axes are factorially distinct.