Mental rotation · Spatial visualisation
Mental Rotation Test
Two figures, one turned. Decide whether the second is the same shape turned — or its mirror image.
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Mental rotation · Spatial visualisation
Mental Rotation
Two figures, one turned. Is the second the same shape turned in the plane — or its mirror? Turn it in your mind and call it.
A spatial-visualisation challenge — turning a shape in the plane. It reads how quickly and cleanly you tell a turn from a reflection.
Survey best · — · Rotor best · — clean
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Keep going
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Free to play here. On Train, part of Core.
What this measures
Mental rotation is turning a shape in the plane in your mind's eye to compare it with another. Here you decide whether the second figure is the first one simply turned, or its mirror image — a task of spatial visualisation. It measures how quickly and cleanly you make that call.
Play a Survey of twenty for your accuracy and rotation cost, or spin up the Rotor.
How to get better
You mostly get better at this task — building a clearer mental picture of each shape, turning it faster, and noticing the small feature that a mirror flips. That’s a real, honest thing to practise, and it’s why accuracy matters more than a single lucky call. It makes you better at telling a rotation from a reflection on a screen.
Questions
- What is mental rotation?
- Mental rotation is turning a shape in the plane in your mind to compare it with another one. It is a classic measure of spatial visualisation — the part of thinking that deals with shapes, space and orientation. Here, two figures are shown and you decide whether the second is the first one turned, or its mirror image.
- How is my score worked out?
- Survey is the honest instrument: a calm, fixed run of twenty turns across five angles in random order. It reports your accuracy out of twenty, your median decision time, and your rotation cost — how much longer a bigger turn takes to check, read off your own rotation curve. Rotor is the arcade run: the pace spins up as you call clean turns, and it reports how many clean turns you strung together before three stalls seized the rotor.
- Why is the second figure sometimes a mirror?
- On half the trials the comparison figure is reflected, not just turned. Every figure is generated to be chiral — it can never be laid over its own mirror image by turning it — so a mirror is genuinely different from any turn and there is always exactly one right answer.
- Do I need an account?
- No. It plays instantly in your browser and your best is saved on your device. An account only adds cross-device history later — the game itself is free and needs nothing.