One brick at a time: Building a developmental profile of spatial abilities

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Cognitive Science
• Spatial Cognition

Background:

• Spatial abilities are crucial for daily living and academic/professional success.
• Assessing spatial development across childhood and adolescence is challenging due to age-inappropriate tasks.
• Traditional tests like the mental rotation test (MRT) are often too difficult for younger children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a novel, hands-on visuospatial task, the brick-building task (BBT), for assessing spatial abilities across different age groups.
• To compare the performance of children and adolescents on the BBT with varying mental rotation demands (LMR and HMR) and the MRT.
• To determine the BBT's suitability for studying factors influencing early visuospatial development.

Main Methods:

• Tested 5-17-year-old children and adolescents in three age groups: 5-8, 9-12, and 13-17 years.
• Administered a low- and high-mental rotation demand (LMR and HMR) version of the BBT and the paper-based MRT.
• Analyzed task performance and correlations between the different spatial tasks.

Main Results:

• All participants successfully completed the BBT, indicating its broad age appropriateness.
• The high-mental rotation demand (HMR) version of the BBT was more challenging, particularly for females.
• The traditional mental rotation test (MRT) was too difficult for younger children, resulting in chance-level performance.

Conclusions:

• The brick-building task (BBT) is a viable, engaging, and age-appropriate tool for assessing visuospatial abilities in children and adolescents.
• The BBT's game-like, 3D, and interactive nature makes it a promising alternative to traditional tests like the MRT.
• The BBT can be utilized to investigate biological and environmental influences on the early development of visuospatial skills.