Older participants are slower than younger individuals in rotating objects in their minds. One possible explanation for this age effect in mental rotation (MR) relies on the different strategies used. To explore this possiblity, in the present study, younger and older participants were assessed with two MR tasks with three- (Exp.1) and two-dimensional objects (Exp.2)with different complexity levels. In both experiments, the performance of the two age groups was comparable in simple objects. However, systematic differences were observed between the MR rates of younger and older adults while processing complex objects. Younger participants were faster in processing complex than simple objects, whereas older participants were slower in rotating complex as compared to simple objects. These results revealed that different strategies were selected by the two age groups when rotating complex objects. A simplified representation of the objects was transformed by younger participants, while older participants rotated the objects piece-by-piece.

中文翻译：

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精神旋转中的年龄效应是由于使用了不同的策略。

年龄较大的参与者在脑海中旋转对象的速度比年轻人慢。关于这种年龄影响的心理旋转（MR）的一种可能解释取决于所使用的不同策略。为了探讨这种可能性，在本研究中，对年轻和年长的参与者进行了两个MR任务，分别具有不同复杂度级别的三个（实验1）和二维对象（实验2）。在两个实验中，两个年龄组的表现在简单物体上都是可比的。但是，在处理复杂物体时，年轻人和老年人的MR率之间存在系统差异。与简单对象相比，年轻的参与者处理复杂对象的速度比简单对象快，而较老的参与者处理复杂对象的旋转速度则较慢。这些结果表明，旋转复杂物体时，两个年龄组选择了不同的策略。较年轻的参与者转换了对象的简化表示，而较老的参与者则逐个旋转了对象。