Mental rotation ability of children with spina bifida: what influence does manual rotation training have?

We investigated the mental rotation ability of children with spina bifida, a malformation of the spinal cord due to a neural tube defect, and how it is influenced by a manual rotation training. In comparison to a healthy control group these children showed longer reaction times and a higher number of errors in a computer-based mental rotation test. Furthermore, a manual rotation training was applied. The spina bifida group benefited considerably from the manual rotation training. The training effect was not limited to stimuli learned in the training. While the children with spina bifida showed a lower speed of mental rotation than their healthy peers in the mental rotation pretest, the two groups did not differ in their mental rotation speed in the posttest.