We have a new paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on the early childhood origins of “cognitive offloading” – our ability to manipulate the external world to aid in cognitive processing. Below is the paper abstract:
An illustration of the study 2 set-up. A single stimulus sheet was presented on a rotatable turntable (left panel). Rotating an inverted sheet so that the stick figures are upright (right panel) facilitates counting the number of figures with their arms pointing up but makes no difference to counting the number of figures with blue faces.
In our new study, out in @RSocPublishing#ProcB, we gave kids the option to manually rotate a turntable to eliminate the demands of mental rotation – to solve the classic problem in the world rather than in their heads.
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