The ability to reason about movement in the visual field

Abstract In tests of visual-spatial reasoning, the examinee must reason about some aspect of a picture. Because of the limitations of paper-and-pencil tests, the picture do not contain any moving elements. These are referred to as static displays. Outside the test situation, people frequently have to reason about visual displays that contain moving elements. These will be called dynamic displays. This experiment investigated whether or not individual differences in the ability to reason about dynamic displays are predictable from tests using static displays. One hundred and seventy people were given a battery of tests, including six standard paper-and-pencil tests of visual-spatial ability, five computer-controlled tests using static displays, and six computer-controlled tests using dynamic displays. Several multivariate analyses indicated that the ability to reason about dynamic visual motion is distinct from the ability to reason about static displays.

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