Lauren Aulet¹ (), Jessica Cantlon¹; ¹Carnegie Mellon University

Spatial skills are critical predictors of educational success, STEM career trajectories, and future income potential. Despite their significance, the neural foundations of spatial cognitive development remain poorly understood. In the present study, we addressed this gap by examining the neural mechanisms underlying spatial cognition in young children (N = 19; mean age = 8.16 years). Participants perform a mental rotation task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The task consisted of blocks of 0°, 50°, and 100° rotation trials, where participants made same/different judgments about pairs of objects. ‘Different’ trials were always comprised of an object and a mirror-reversed version of the same object. To measure the effect of angularity disparity, behavioral performance was quantified as the slope of mean accuracy on rotation angle. Children exhibited slopes significantly different from zero, indicating robust angular disparity effects, such that mean accuracy decreased as rotation angle increased. Univariate fMRI analyses comparing rotation versus non-rotation blocks revealed significant activation in multiple regions: bilateral parietal cortex, bilateral motor cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and thalamus. Analysis of brain-behavior relationships demonstrated significant positive correlations between angular disparity and activation in parietal cortex, indicating that greater angular disparity corresponded to increased neural activity in these regions, suggesting these regions may be involved in representing spatial orientation of the objects. Conversely, significant negative correlations were observed in motor cortex and thalamus, where greater neural activity was associated with reduced angular disparity, suggesting these regions may be involved in the speed or efficiency of mental rotation. Importantly, these correlations remained significant after controlling for age and general intelligence. This study represents the first investigation of the neural bases of mental rotation in young children and suggests that similar neural mechanisms may support mental rotation across development from childhood to adulthood.