Age and experience effects in spatial visualization

Three studies were conducted to investigate effects related to age and experience on measures of spatial visualization ability. All research participants were college-educated men; those in the experienced group were practicing or recently retired architects. The major results of the studies were (a) that increased age was found to be associated with lower levels of performance on several tests of spatial visualization and (b) that this was true both for unselected adults and for adults with extensive spatial visualization experience. These findings seem to suggest that age-related effects in some aspects of cognitive functioning may be independent of experiential influences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved

Decomposing adult age differences in spatial ability : a componential analysis of cube comparison performance

M.S.Timothy A. Salthous

Sources of individual differences in spatial visualization ability

Two experiments are reported in which different batteries of specially designed spatial tasks were administered to male college students. The subjects were selected to be either high or relatively low in spatial visualization ability as assessed by performance on four paper-and-pencil tests (Paper Folding, Surface Development, Form Board, and Cube Comparisons). Three hypotheses proposed to account for individual differences in spatial visualization ability were investigated. These hypotheses attribute differences in spatial visualization ability to variations in: (a) representational quality, (b) transformational efficiency, and (c) preservation of representations during transformations. The failure to find differences related to spatial visualization ability in the accuracy of recognition memory decisions and in the speed of transformations is inconsistent with the first two hypotheses. The evidence was somewhat mixed with respect to the preservation-under-transformation hypothesis, but it does appear that spatial visualization differences are most pronounced when some information must be preserved while the same or other information is being processed