Loading page
About this tool
Measure your spatial intelligence and ability to mentally manipulate shapes.
The Mental Rotation Test presents 15 same-or-different trials in which a target block figure is shown beside a comparison figure that has either been rotated by 90, 180 or 270 degrees, or mirrored and then rotated. You answer with the right arrow for same and the left arrow for different, and the test records accuracy plus reaction time on every trial. It is a browser version of the classic Shepard-Metzler paradigm for anyone curious about their spatial visualisation ability.
Open Mental Rotation Test on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Press "Start Test (15 Trials)" and study each pair: a Target Shape shown beside a Comparison figure that is either rotated or mirrored.
Answer with the right arrow (or the "Same (Rotated)" button) if the figures match after rotation, or the left arrow ("Different (Mirrored)") if the comparison is a mirror image — each response is timed from the moment the pair appears.
After trial 15, read your Spatial Grade with accuracy out of 15 and average reaction time in milliseconds, then press "Retake Test" to run again.
The "different" pairs are horizontally flipped before being rotated, so you cannot pass by matching block counts — you have to check handedness.
Every response is timed from the moment the pair appears, so you get an average response time alongside accuracy rather than a bare score.
Left and right arrow keys answer each trial with a 400 ms gap before the next, keeping response times comparable across the run.
15 trials, typically a few minutes. Roughly half the pairs are genuine rotations and half are mirror images, decided at random per trial, so guessing consistently lands near 50%.
This test grades 80% or above as excellent, 60-79% as average and below 60% as below average. Accuracy alone is not the whole picture — a high score with a very long average response time means you are solving the rotation rather than seeing it.
It measures spatial visualisation: your ability to hold a figure in working memory and transform it. In the original Shepard and Metzler work, response time increased roughly linearly with the angle of rotation, which is why the task is treated as evidence of an analogue mental transformation rather than a lookup.
Practice reliably improves speed and accuracy on this kind of task, though how far the gain transfers to other spatial skills is debated. Repeated runs here will also benefit from familiarity with the five base figures, so treat later scores as practice effects rather than a change in underlying ability.