This study investigates the cognitive strategies employed during a mental rotation task through the integration of interview data and eye-tracking heat map analysis. A total of 20 interviews between 4 participants were analyzed independently by two coders to identify holistic and piecemeal rotation strategies and eye-tracking heat maps were examined in conjunction with interview data to reveal patterns of visual attention corresponding to these strategies. Preliminary results indicate that heat maps can effectively distinguish between holistic and piecemeal strategies, characterized by distinct visual attention patterns. Holistic strategies displayed uneven attention distribution with complementary focal points on the two orientations, while piecemeal strategies exhibited multiple focal points that were mirror images of each other. These findings suggest that heat maps could offer a robust method for identifying cognitive strategies in mental rotation tasks, paving the way for a visual analytical framework of spatial thinking studies. [For the full proceedings, see ED665357.]