A number of cultural and neurophysiological variables were studied to examine their relationship with sex differences in spatial ability. Five paper-and-pencil spatial ability tests were administered to a group of 50 male and 51 female college students, with approximately equal numbers for each sex being left- or right-handed and left- or…

Sex differences in speed of solving mental rotation problems were replicated but college men and women were alike in frequency of use of algorithms to solve problems. The most frequent algorithm involved encoding stimuli in working memory, mental rotation of one to orientation of the other, comparison, and response. (Author/RD)

After a brief review of the contributions of factor analysis and regional analysis to the elaboration of the structures of spatial abilities, a facet design and regional model for spatial abilities are presented. A cylindrical-wedge model is proposed to represent the correlational structure of spatial ability tests. (SLD)

In this study of primary school children, a novel "symbol-string" task is used to assess sensitivity to the position of briefly presented non-alphabetic but letter-like symbols. The results demonstrate that sensitivity in the symbol-string task explains a unique proportion of the variability in children's contextual reading accuracy. Moreover,…

The ability to recognize, extend, and relate patterns and sequences to numeric, figural, and word representations plays a prominent role in science education. This study provided validation information for an instrument to assess childrens' ability to recognize and extend patterns and sequence in different representational forms. A 57-item…

This study examines the Wheatley Cube as a measure of spatial/visualization ability. The Wheatley Cube is a computer managed task which requires the subject to visualize a three-dimensional workspace and to find an invisible dot located within this space. Thirty-three undergraduate students were administered four tests of spatial/imaginal ability…

This series of activities on spatial relationships was designed to help users acquire the skills of spatial visualization and orientation and to improve their effectiveness in applying those skills. The series contains an introduction to spatial orientation with several self-directed activities to help improve that skill. It also contains seven…

Five-, five-and-a-half-, and seven-month-old infants were tested for sensitivity to relative size as distance information. Infants viewed two equidistant, different-sized objects presented side by side and reaching was used as dependent measure. Findings revealing five-and-a-half- and seven- but not five-month-olds were sensitive to relative size…

A study of 1,283 academically talented junior high students found that males had higher scores on three of the four subtests of the Spatial Test Battery of the Institute for the Academic Advancement of Youth. Females scored higher on the visual memory test and spent more time on the tests. (Author/CR)

As part of an experimental research program on lifespan naturalistic and laboratory memory for spatial representation, investigators examined interactions between the effects of visual and kinesthetic encoding and age on memory for space using a modification of the Sinnott (1987) human maze paradigm. It was hypothesized that an age effect favoring…

Undergraduates were given complex figural analogies items, and eye movements were observed under three types of feedback: (1) elaborate feedback; (2) subjects verbalized their thinking and application of rules; and (3) no feedback. Both feedback conditions enhanced the rule-governed information processing during inductive reasoning. (Author/GDC)

Forty five-year-olds compared two arms of an L-shaped figure on-axis or perpendicular to axis inside circles of different diameters. In making perceptual judgments about the relative length, the children tended to describe the on-axis line as longer. The context model of visual anomalies was supported. (Author/CM)

The authors investigated whether emotional pictorial stimuli are especially likely to be processed in parafoveal vision. Pairs of emotional and neutral visual scenes were presented parafoveally (2.1[degrees] or 2.5[degrees] of visual angle from a central fixation point) for 150-3,000 ms, followed by an immediate recognition test (500-ms delay).…

The ecological validity of three spatial ability tests was studied: The Embedded Figures Test, the Shepard/Metzler Mental Rotations Test, and the Differential Aptitude Spatial Relations subtest. The Building Memory Test was also examined in an attempt to replicate a previous study which supported its validity. These four tests were administered to…

Studies the ability of 5-month-old infants to recall temporal information and use temporal organization by training them to fixate a hierarchically structured or unstructured sequence of stimuli which appeared in four spatial positions. Results are interpreted within a temporal organizational framework; infants appear to use organization within…