Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.
Department of Kinesiology and Sport Management, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2021 Sep;63(6):e22155. doi: 10.1002/dev.22155. Epub 2021 Jul 1.
Spatial abilities are not only fundamental for activities of daily living, but they are also markers of academic and professional success. It has remained a challenge, however, to understand their development across childhood and adolescence, partly because of the lack of spatial tasks that are appropriate across age groups. For example, the well-established paper-based mental rotation test (MRT) has been shown to be too difficult for children. In the current study, we tested girls and boys in three age groups: younger children (5-8-years-old), older children (9-12), and adolescents (13-17) on a hands-on visuospatial task using toy bricks: the brick-building task (BBT). Children completed a low- and a high-mental rotation demand (LMR and HMR) version of the BBT and the paper-based MRT. Correlations were found between all tasks. Children, especially females, found the HMR more challenging than the LMR condition, but all children successfully completed the BBT. In contrast, the MRT was too difficult for the younger children to solve performing at chance. Given this result and that the BBT is a game-like, 3D, interactive task, the BBT could be used to examine the biological and/or environmental factors that affect the early development of visuospatial abilities.
空间能力不仅是日常生活活动的基础，也是学术和职业成功的标志。然而，要了解它们在儿童期和青春期的发展情况仍然具有挑战性，部分原因是缺乏适合不同年龄组的空间任务。例如，经过充分验证的纸笔式心理旋转测试（MRT）对于儿童来说过于困难。在当前的研究中，我们使用玩具积木对手工视觉空间任务（brick-building task，BBT）对三个年龄组的女孩和男孩进行了测试：年幼的孩子（5-8 岁）、年龄较大的孩子（9-12 岁）和青少年（13-17 岁）。孩子们完成了 BBT 的低和高心理旋转需求（LMR 和 HMR）版本以及基于纸张的 MRT。所有任务之间都存在相关性。孩子们，尤其是女孩，发现 HMR 比 LMR 条件更具挑战性，但所有孩子都成功完成了 BBT。相比之下，MRT 对于年幼的孩子来说太难了，以至于他们只能靠猜测来解决。鉴于这一结果以及 BBT 是一种游戏化、3D、互动的任务，BBT 可用于研究影响视觉空间能力早期发展的生物和/或环境因素。
