Improvement of Mental Rotation Ability Using Blender 3-D

Mental Rotation (MR) is an aspect of spatial ability. MR ability is important in various fields ranging from art and education to engineering and technology. MR ability can be improved by computer based training. Most existing techniques require weeks of training and are based on proprietary software. We developed a three-hour training module using Blender, an open source software. In this paper, we present experimental details of the effect of our training on the improvement of MR ability. Our sample was42 first year engineering undergraduate students and we used Vandenberg´s Mental Rotation Test for pretest and post-test. We analyzed the results and found them to be significant, leading to a large effect size for the entire sample. We also found that females and low achievers are more likely to benefit by such training.