The comparison of mental rotation of active and inactive college students

This research aimed at studying the differences of mental rotation performance in two groups (active and passive) with regards to their gender. The method of this research is causal-comparative and samples were selected targeted from physical education students and other humanities fields. The sample was included 80 students (physical education students=40 people & students of humanities field=40 people and each groups consists of 20 males & 20 females). Peters’ mental rotation test was used to measuring the performance of mental rotation. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used for normality of data and two-way ANOVA test was used for comparison of means. The findings showed that there was a significant difference (P ≤0.01) between mental rotation of physical education students in comparison with the humanities students. Also, there was a significant difference (P ≤0.01) between the mental rotation in males towards females. Generally, the results indicate the superiority of the active students and males in the ability of mental rotation. Since physical activity enhances mental rotation, it may be assumed that physical activity enhances also other cognitive domains and is worth implementing in the education process.