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Relationship between spatial ability, visuospatial working memory and self-assessed spatial orientation ability: a study in older adults

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Abstract

This paper describes some novel spatial tasks and questionnaires designed to assess spatial and orientation abilities. The new tasks and questionnaires were administered to a sample of 90 older adults (41 males, age range 57–90), along with some other tests of spatial ability (Minnesota Paper Form Board, Mental Rotations Test, and Embedded Figures Test) and tests of visuospatial working memory (Corsi’s Block Test and Visual Pattern Test). The internal reliability of the new tasks and questionnaires was analyzed, as well as their relationship with the spatial and working memory tests. The results showed that the new spatial tasks are reliable, correlate with working memory and spatial ability tests and, compared with the latters, show stronger correlations with the self-report questionnaires referring to orientation abilities. A model was also tested (with reference to Allen et al. in Intelligence 22:327–355, 1996) in which the new tasks were assumed to relate to spatial ability and predict orientation abilities as assessed by the self-report measures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. IRCCS Fondazione Ospedale San Camillo, Via Alberoni, 70, 30126, Venice, Italy

    Micaela Mitolo & Annalena Venneri

  2. Department of Neurosciences, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Simona Gardini & Paolo Caffarra

  3. Center for Cognitive Disorders, AUSL, Parma, Italy

    Paolo Caffarra

  4. Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Lucia Ronconi

  5. Department of Neuroscience, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Annalena Venneri

  6. Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Francesca Pazzaglia

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  1. Micaela Mitolo
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  2. Simona Gardini
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  3. Paolo Caffarra
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  4. Lucia Ronconi
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  5. Annalena Venneri
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  6. Francesca Pazzaglia
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Correspondence to Micaela Mitolo.

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Mitolo, M., Gardini, S., Caffarra, P. et al. Relationship between spatial ability, visuospatial working memory and self-assessed spatial orientation ability: a study in older adults. Cogn Process 16, 165–176 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0647-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0647-3

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