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Science 19 February 1971:
Vol. 171. no. 3972, pp. 701 - 703
DOI: 10.1126/science.171.3972.701
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Articles

Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects

Roger N. Shepard 1 and Jacqueline Metzler 1

1 Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305

The time required to recognize that two perspective drawings portray objects of the same three-dimensional shape is found to be (i) a linearly increasing function of the angular difference in the portrayed orientations of the two objects and (ii) no shorter for differences corresponding simply to a rigid rotation of one of the two-dimensional drawings in its own picture plane than for differences corresponding to a rotation of the three-dimensional object in depth.


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