INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN SPATIAL ABILITIES OF CHILDREN

A previous study by Thomas and Lohaus (1993) using binomial mixture analyses showed that subgroups of subjects could be identified which were characterized by different success probabilities. The present study provides a replication of the earlier work and includes additional spatial tasks in order to examine whether the subgroup structure in water-level task performance is related to performance differences on other spatial tasks. Subjects were 604 children and adolescents aged 7 to 15 years. Besides the water level task, three additional types of tasks were presented which represented different spatial abilities (spatial perception, spatial visualization, and mental rotation according to a classification scheme by Linn & Petersen, 1985). In addition to replicating the subgroup structure in water-level task performance, the results show significant differences between the subgroups in the performance of other spatial tasks. This means that the water-level subgroup structure is related to more general individual differences in the area of spatial abilities.