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Area 3 of 6 · 5 scored questions

Spatial rotation

A reference piece and a few options. One of them is the same piece, just rotated. The others are its mirror image or a different piece.

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  • 5 of the 37 scored questions
  • flat pieces and cubes
  • no time limit per question

What it measures

What rotation asks of you

At the easier levels the pieces are flat, made of squares. At the harder ones, they are assemblies of cubes drawn in perspective.

  • 1

    Hold the shape in your mind

    Keep the reference piece in mind while you rotate it mentally, without losing a corner along the way.

  • 2

    Tell rotation from mirroring

    The most common trap is the mirrored piece: it looks the same, but no rotation gets you there.

  • 3

    Pick an anchor point

    Tracking one detail of the piece, such as its longest end, makes it easier to compare positions.

During the test

What helps with rotation

  • Pick a distinctive corner of the piece and look for where it ended up in each option.
  • If two options look identical, one of them is the mirror image. Check which side each detail is on.
  • Rotate in 90-degree steps, one at a time, instead of trying the whole turn at once.

What the research says

Where this area comes from

Mental rotation

In 1971, Shepard and Metzler showed that the time it takes to say whether two shapes are the same grows with the angle between them, as if the person were turning the image in their head.

The most consistent type in ICAR

Among ICAR’s question types, 3D rotation has the highest internal consistency. That’s why it’s in the test, with new pieces generated by code.

We don’t give an IQ per area: with only a few questions in each, the error would be too large. The report shows how many you got right and whether the area came out above, in line with, or below your overall result.

Questions

Questions about this area

I was never good at drawing. Will that get in the way?

You don’t have to draw. The area asks you to compare positions, and most people do better once they pick one detail of the piece to follow.

Why are there mirrored pieces?

Because telling rotation from mirroring is exactly what the area measures. A mirrored piece never matches the original, no matter how you turn it.

The 6 areas

Other areas of the test

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Taking the test is free · IQNorth is an educational reasoning test: the result is an estimate, with a margin of error, for personal and educational use.