Even though successful navigation is vital for survival, individuals vary widely in their navigation skills. Researchers have examined the correlates of such variation using a wide variety of paradigms. However, we know little about the relation among the paradigms used, and their validity for real-world behaviors. In this study, we assessed 94…

Cognitive tasks are seldom evaluated on their ability to provide valid and reliable measurements of the construct they intend to measure. This scarcity of psychometric evaluations makes it challenging to evaluate replications of experimental effects and to relate performance in cognitive tasks to other constructs of interest. In developmental…

Spatial ability is defined as a cognitive or intellectual skill used to represent, transform, generate, and recall information of an object or the environment. Individual differences across spatial tasks have been strongly linked to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) interest and success. Several variables have been proposed…

Spatial thinking is essential for nurturing spatially literate graduates in tertiary education. However, there is limited research on individual differences in cognitive processes and their impact on spatial problem solving in disciplinary contexts. This study aimed to investigate cognitive processes involved in spatial thinking in geography…

Although we cannot see or touch time, across many cultures, we use spatial representations to think about this abstract concept. Spatial representations of time are thought to support temporal concepts that might otherwise be difficult to represent and reason about, such as the temporal component of episodic memory. One common form of spatially…

The aim of this study was to investigate individual differences in mathematical problem-solving among 3- to 5-year-old children (N = 328; n[subscript 3-year-olds] = 115, n[subscript 4-year-olds] = 167, n[subscript 5-year-olds] = 46). First, we examined the extent to which children in this age group were able to solve open and closed non-routine…

This quantitative study examined the effects of stored color knowledge on learning achievement and cognitive load using a randomized pretest-posttest control group design. Social media was used to recruit 60 adult participants, randomized into control and experimental groups. A multimedia lesson was presented where the control group viewed images…

The Useful Field of View task (UFOV) is a strong and reliable predictor of crash risk in older drivers. However, while the functional domain of attention is clearly implicated in UFOV performance, the potential role of one specific attentional process remains unclear: attentional breadth (the spatial extent of the attended region around the point…

Effective learning in chemistry education requires students to understand visual representations across multiple conceptual levels. Essential to this process are visuospatial skills which enable students to interpret and manipulate these representations effectively. These abilities allow students to construct mental models that support problem…

Small-scale spatial abilities that involve the mental representation and transformation of two- and three-dimensional images and manipulation of objects at table-top have been studied extensively and are considered predictive of both interest and success in STEM disciplines. However, research investigating the relation of large-scale spatial…

Previous research has investigated the Spatial Numerical Associations of Response Codes (SNARC) effect as a measure of spatial number coding in relation to mathematics (Cipora et al., 2020, https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.14355). An issue that arises if one wants to correlate mathematical performance with the SNARC effect, is how individual…

This research examined how spatial ability, sex, and cognitive styles associate with self-directed multimedia resource use (study 1) and learning outcomes (study 2). In study 1, three learning resource options were offered: two unimodal (text-only and labelled-picture) and one multimodal (picture-with-narration). Findings revealed that lower…

During adolescence, increases in pubertal hormones lead to reproductive maturity as well as changes in cognitive development. Yet, little is known about how to best characterize interindividual differences in hormone concentrations. The goal of the current study was to examine the antecedents and consequences of membership in empirically derived…

A growing body of research suggests that children's understanding of mathematical language is critical for their mathematical abilities. Most of this work has been restricted to single language learners (i.e., SLLs), and used dual language learners (i.e., DLLs) as an exclusion criterion, raising questions about the generalizability of these…