Individual differences in sensory processing sensitivity and alexithymia modulate mental rotation performance and fully mediate the relationships between performance variables and depression/anxiety, offering a plausible explanation for why mental imagery and mental health outcomes have been linked in past work.
Group-level results indicated distinct mental imagery strategies were used depending on task and stimulus type.
There was considerable individual variation across conditions in both the SDT and HLT despite consistent group-level patterns.
With targets rotated 120°, response times for back-view hand judgments in the HLT varied as a function of sex and sensory processing sensitivity (SPS).
Alexithymia predicted lower accuracy in the SDT with targets rotated 120°.
SPS and alexithymia fully mediated the relationships between task performance variables and depression/anxiety.
The study examined multiple individual difference variables including sensory processing sensitivity, alexithymia, anxiety, and depression in relation to mental rotation performance.
This research suggests that when people mentally rotate images of hands to judge their identity or orientation, they do not all use the same mental strategies. At the group level, people appeared to use object-based mental rotation for a general shape-matching task, spatial rotation for judging the back of hands, and a kind of 'motor imagination' (imagining moving their own hand) for palm views. However, there was substantial variation between individuals in how they approached these tasks, and personality traits helped explain some of this variation. Specifically, women and people who score high on 'sensory processing sensitivity' — a trait reflecting deeper processing of sensory and emotional information — were faster at judging hands rotated in a particular direction, possibly because they tend to mentally 'step into' another person's perspective and body posture when viewing their hand. The research also found that a trait called alexithymia — difficulty identifying and describing one's own emotions — was linked to making more errors in the shape-matching task at a specific rotation angle, possibly because alexithymia is associated with difficulties in executive function that interfere with checking one's mental rotation answer. Importantly, both sensory processing sensitivity and alexithymia statistically fully explained (mediated) the connections between how people performed on these mental rotation tasks and their levels of anxiety and depression. This matters because it offers a possible explanation for why mental imagery abilities have repeatedly been linked to mental health in previous research. Rather than mental rotation skill directly causing or reflecting anxiety and depression, these personality traits — sensory processing sensitivity and alexithymia — appear to be key connecting factors. This research suggests that individual personality differences shape how people mentally simulate actions and perspectives, and that these same traits also influence vulnerability to anxiety and depression.
Jakobson L, McCheyne R, Pearson P. (2026). Exploring individual differences in the mental rotation of hands and their links to mental health.. Acta psychologica. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2026.106875