Effects of Tropical Climate on Mental Rotation: The Role of Imagery Ability

This study examined how a tropical climate (i.e., hot and wet climatic environment) could affect mental rotation according to imagery ability. The participants performed 2 test sessions in a tropical climate (TC), then in air conditioning (AC), in a randomized order. During each session, the participants completed the Movement Imagery Questionnaire, revised version (MIQ-R) and the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test (VMRT). A first analysis including all the participants revealed that men had better VMRT scores than women in AC, which confirms the gender effect generally observed. However, no statistical gender difference was observed in TC, in which men performed worse. A second analysis including MIQ-R scores as participant selection found a significant interaction between imagery ability and climate condition and revealed that poor imagers had worse VMRT scores in TC than in AC, whereas no significant difference was observed for good imagers. Moreover, MIQ-R scores were lower in TC than in AC for the visual and kinesthetic imagery. More precisely, good imagers had significantly lower visual imagery MIQ-R scores in TC than in AC, and kinesthetic imagery MIQ-R scores of poor imagers tended to deteriorate in TC. The results of this study are consistent with the idea that TC can negatively affect mental rotation, motor imagery, and imagery ability, and the influence of TC on them is discussed. More research is needed to investigate the effects of hygrometry on imagery.