The question of what is learned during practice is crucial in terms of transfer of learning from one context to another and in terms of designing educational programs. During intense practice in judging pairs of shapes as same or different, for example, one has the opportunity to learn what particular shapes look like in different orientations; thus, part of the learning is pattern teaming. However, there are two other possibilities: practice might result in improvements in the speed of mentally rotating those particular shapes involved in the practice, or practice might result in an improvement in the skill of mentally rotating shapes in general. Insofar as practice results in improvement in a general mental rotation skill, then benefits of practice gained with one set of shapes should transfer and show up as benefits when people are asked to judge novel shapes. On the other hand, if practice results in building specific pattern knowledge of particular shapes from different orientations, then practice with one set of shapes should transfer only to highly similar shapes with little or no transfer to different shapes. Laboratory research has resolved this issue for short periods of practice at mental rotation ranging up to several hours in duration.
The benefit of extended practice results in pattern teaming that contributes to gains in mental rotation speed. Some evidence indicates that practice increases the speed of mentally rotating those specific shapes involved in practice. There is little or no evidence that mental rotation practice leads to a domain general skill because improvements do not transfer to novel shapes. Studies are limited, however, in terms of the amount of practice and the variety of shapes practiced. As a consequence, we do not know the degree to which extended periods of practice and the degree to which practice with a larger set of shapes might result in improvement in either generalized mental rotation orother stages of image processing. Thus, forexample, we do not know whether the expertise of an architect at visualizing buildings from different perspectives and in various configurations would transfer to skill at visualizing molecular structures or geological structures.
The research most relevant to this question focused on video game experts. Sims and Mayer compared college students highly skilled at Tetris with those who were not so skilled. Terris is a computer game in which success depends on rotating shapes so that later-appearing shapes interlock cleanly with earlier-appearing shapes. The game begins with a blank screen; one of seven shapes appears at the top of the screen and descends toward the bottom. During its descent the goal is to rotate and translate the shape, so that when it reaches the bottom of the screen it is in position to fit nicely with the shapes that follow in a continuous series. Speed is a critical factor, players have to anticipate how much to rotate shapes to fit them together.
Experts are rapid and accurate in deciding how much to rotate shapes to optimize fit. Sims and Mayer. wanted to find out whether high levels of skill at mentally rotating Terris shapes would transfer to rotating other shapes in the Terris context. Results show a limited amount of near transfer: experts were better able than novices to play a Tetrisaike game in rotating shapes that although not identical to the shapes used in Tetris were very similar to them. However, there was no evidence for far transfer. That is, experts did not show the same advantage in rotating shapes that were unlike those used in Terris (even when those shapes were familiar from another context such as capital letters).
Based on laboratory studies, pattern teaming and spatial transformations such as mental rotation are relatively domain specific. Learning to recognize and classify types of spatial patterns that characterize one field of expertise does not transfer when trying to learn other types of spatial patterns from another field. The benefits of practicing transformations of spatial patterns that characterize one field of study do not seem to transfer to other fields. Learning things is not limited to the scentific area. Instead it also has relations with some other things like speaking a language or using software, including Rosetta Stone English and Rosetta Stone French. If you have a creative mind, you will make all your own differences in the end!