Does Body Awareness Influence Visual Spatial Intelligence?
Keywords:
Mental Rotation; Anorexia Nervosa; Embodiment; Elite AthletesAbstract
The embodiment approach suggests that processes in the body
influence cognitive performance. Due to this in the present study,
female patients with high body awareness-elite athletes and patients
with Anorexia Nervosa- as well as healthy controls performed a mental
rotation task with different kinds of stimuli. Mental rotation is the
ability to imagine objects from different perspectives. The results show
that both experimental groups revealed a better mental rotation
performance than the control group in form of faster reaction times. This
result is independent of the kind of stimuli, i.e., if the mental rotation
requires the transformation of the self (egocentric) or the object (objectbased). We further found that BMI and IQ correlated with reaction time.
Because there was no difference between the elite athletes (positive body
awareness) compared to the patients with Anorexia Nervosa (negative
body awareness) the results suggest that any occupation with the body
relates to visual spatial intelligence. This result is discussed regarding its
importance in the educational context.
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