Research on Children‘s Mental Rotation Ability Training using Augmented Reality-based Virtual Model

Mental rotation refers to a mental operation process of making planar or stereoscopic rotation of the mirror image of a person himself, or a visual stimulus (like a graph) in his/her brain. An augmented reality (AR)-based virtual model was established to control the children’s cognitive characteristics, etc., and realize the mental rotation ability training among the target children. The mental rotation experimental materials of Peter1995 version were used and divided into abstract images, and concrete models, two progressive experiments were carried out, followed by the type-in and statistical analysis of the data via SPSS22.0. In the end, the results were evaluated using the SUS system scale, and whether the AR technology-based teaching could improve the children’s abstract thinking abilities in generalizing and classifying the objects from different dimensions was judged. The research results show that the AR technology can support the formation of children’s concrete and abstract thinking, and provide the effective mental rotation ability training for the preschool children 3-6 years old.