Available in English, German, Spanish, French (see below to implement the task in other languages).
The MBRT is a behavioural paradigm aiming to assess the ability to manipulate movement imagery. If you are interested in assessing Movement Imagery ability, visit the Movement Imagery Ability Platform for an overview of open-source behavioural tasks.
The task was adapted from classical mental rotation paradigms Shepard & Metzler, (1988) to emphasize body-centered transformations and motor-cognitive integration (Dahm et al., 2022; Steggmann et al., 2011). This repository contains the materials for an open-source (and user-friendly) version of the MBRT for local and online use, based on Dahm et al. (2022), provided in open-source experiment presentation software. The most updated versions can be found in this repository.
Subsequent updates in native software (PsychoPy and OpenSesame) may need adjustments. As developers, we are not responsible for implementing these in every use case.
An example of the setup is shown below.
This repository has four main folders, which contain PsychoPy (.psyexp) and OpenSesame (.osexp) experiments, together with associated files to run them locally (lab/desktop experiments) or online (in a browser).
Please consult the accompanying manuscript (Czilczer et al., 2026) on the Movement Imagery Ability Platform for a guide on necessary steps to run a task in each of the four deployment modes, which can help with the decision.
The versions provided in this repository allow flexibility in terms of key experiment parameters of the MBRT:
- angles of rotation
- body views
- limbs
- types of response
- trial-to-trial feedback
- number of repetitions
The optimal protocol is at the user's discretion, but sensible defaults have been implemented.
If you want to contribute to this repository by providing a language translation, or want to run the task in your own language, expansions can be done relatively easily thanks to the implementation of language localisations (please read each README to understand how to implement these). You can also see these demos showing how to implement a language localisation in PsychoPy and OpenSesame with virtually no code.