DOI: 10.60641/gscg-pb20
title: Mental Rotations Test (MRT)

description: The Netherlands Twin Register (NTR) consists of individuals who have agreed to participate in twin-family studies and was established and is managed by the Department of Biological Psychology, VU University Amsterdam (see: https://tweelingenregister.vu.nl/). The NTR was established in 1987 and has enrolled around 120.000 twins and a roughly equal number of their relatives. The majority of twin families have participated one or more times in survey studies on a host of epidemiological variables including social demography, personality, lifestyle, somatic and mental health, and subsamples took part in biomaterial collection (e.g. DNA) and dedicated projects for e.g. neuropsychological, biomarker, and behavioral traits. The recruitment into the NTR is fully inclusive without any restrictions on enrolment. The NTR is committed to actively seek the commitment of its participants to science and their continued involvement in NTR research by maintaining a website, electronic newsletters, and the MijnNTR portal that provides personalized feedback to participants. The NTR resources, e.g. the longitudinal phenotyping, the extended pedigree structures, and the multi-generation genotyping allow for future twin-family research that will contribute to gene discovery, causality modelling, and studies of genetic and cultural inheritance of behavioral traits and mental and physical health. In the CID data catalogue, only the NTR projects for children and adolescents (<18 years of age) have been included. This is refered to as the Young Netherlands Twin Register (YNTR). 
description: In the Mental Rotations Test (MRT), participants are asked to compare two-dimensional drawings and three- dimensional geometric figures in order to assess spatial processing.
description: In NTR project YE_ATTEF3, a computerized version of the MRT is used, and participants received instructions from the experimenters in either a low pressure condition or a high pressure condition. In the low pressure, the instructions were as follows: “These two tests measure people’s perceptual and attentional ability, that is, people’s capacity to correctly perceive and pay attention to details of relatively abstract objects. It is still under construction for my scientific work with a very large sample of European individuals including twins. These two tests are part of a larger number of tests. In order to get information on the maximum number of tests, you and your co-twin will do different tests. Clearly, the two forthcoming tests will be not the same for you and your co-twin. These tests are complementary with the tests you have performed in the past.” In the high pressure condition, the instructions were as follows: “These two tests measure your ability in the domain of “analytic reasoning”, a very important intellectual ability that is strongly related to people’s ability in mathematics and science, and more generally to people’s intelligence. You and your co-twin will do exactly the same tests. Clearly, the two forthcoming tests will be exactly the same for you and your co-twin. These tests are complementary with the tests you have performed in the past.”