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Mental rotation · The Lab

Same or mirror?

Play Same or mirror?

How to play

Two shapes, one turned. Is it the same shape, or its mirror image? Forty seconds, as many as you can.

Tap same or mirror · Or keys s m

Free in your browser, with ten levels that get harder. No account; your best scores stay on your device.

What the study found

The mind turns shapes at a steady speed.

Deciding whether two drawings showed the same object took longer the further one was turned, in a straight line, as if people rotated it in their heads. Theirs were 3D block drawings; ours are flat.

Roger Shepard and Jacqueline Metzler · Science, 1971

Why it matters

Bigger turns take longer, on average, for nearly everyone. That is not a lack of effort; it is how the mind does the job. KOZMO looks at behaviour at work the same way: as something that keeps happening in a situation, never a label for a person.

It is for fun: the game does not measure you.

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