A Stereographic Mental Cutting Test by Using Liquid Crystalline Shutters

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We have developed a Photo-Stereographic Mental Cutting Test, in which problems are given as stereo-paired photographs of real objects. We administered the PS-MCT and standard MCT to university students. The principal results are as follows. 1) The correct response rates on the PS-MCT were higher than those on the standard MCT only for some of the 25 problems. There was no significant difference for most of the problems. 2) Detailed analysis of the alternatives selected by subjects showed that, when there was a higher rate of correct responses on the PS-MCT, it was due to an easier recognition of objects and of the relative locations of cutting planes. This, in turn, indicates that many errors in the corresponding problems on the standard MCT occur during the processes of recognizing objects and the relative locations of cutting planes. It also indicates that, in problems for which the rates of correct responses do not vary on the PS-MCT, many errors occurred in generating sections, processing invisible parts of problems, and judging quantities such as the lengths of the edges of sections. 3) We may, conclude, based on these results, that higher level information processing in human mind rather than pure recognition plays an important role in solving problems in the MCT.