EVALUATION OF THE MENTAL ROTATION ON UNDERGRADUATE PHYSIOTHERAPY STUDENTS

Background: Mental Rotation (MR) is a cognitive process that allows the individual to mentally perform the turning and rotation of an object from different perspectives. This skill can facilitate in the student, will allow the study human body from topographic plans and to understand the possible relations between a differents anatomic structures. Therefore, the analysis of the movement from different anatomical planes (coronal, sagittal and transverse). In this context, this work presents the results of an evaluation of MR in undergraduate students of physiotherapy, at different stages of their professional training.

Purpose: To evaluate the performance of the MR in undergraduate students of physiotherapy during the first, fourth, and ninth semester. Due to the nature of the syllabus, a gradual improvement in the MR is expected for those individuals in the ninth semester.

Methods: This work presents a descriptive cross-sectional quantitative research, in which the Mental Rotation Test is applied to fifty-one students of physiotherapy of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Colombia. All the individuals signed the informed consent. The study consists of responding to twenty rows of statements. Each row has a model figure, followed by four structures on the right of the model where the participant must indicate whether they are related to the model figure.

Results: The participants (n = 51) were 17 men and 34 women, 17 per selected period. It was found that 60% of the students correspond to a low grade in mental rotation evaluation ( = 17.06, SD = 4.54).
The inter-group analysis does not show a statistically significant difference in the students who scored in a low-level grade (82%). The low-level grade progression went from 18% in the first semester to zero in the ninth semester. In contrast, the trend of the high-level grade increased progressively until reaching 41% (p=0.001) in the fourth semester, showing a significant improvement, and then a moderate decrease to 18% in the ninth semester

Conclusion(s): Although the study does not show statistically significant differences among semesters, an increasing performance trend of students scoring at a high level, from the first to the fourth semester, is observed. However, after the practical phase in the third year, an improvement in the performance of the MR would be expected, as a result of the training associated with this phase of the educational process. This is not evidenced in this study. On the other hand, the future application of the MR evaluation in teachers is proposed as a pedagogical strategy to facilitate the development of MR in the academic community.

Implications: This project contributes, from an academic and clinical perspective, to a better knowledge and development of spatial-temporal skills that facilitate the understanding of the interaction between the human body and its surrounding space. The analysis of the relationships between spatial-temporal aspects and the Human Body Movement constitutes the basis for future research on the subject This research is the starting point to evaluate the development and optimization of these spatial-temporal skills in the students under professional training.

Funding, acknowledgements: The present work was supported by Corporación Universitaria Iberoamericana

Keywords: Mental rotation, Physiotherapy, High school

Topic: Education

Did this work require ethics approval? Yes

Institution: Corporación Universitaria Iberoamericana

Committee: Faculty of health sciences - Corporación Universitaria Iberoamericana in June 2019

Ethics number: 201910D058