A study on visuospatial reasoning ability and working memory across ages

Visuospatial reasoning (VSR) is the ability to manipulate visuospatial information so as to reason out logical inferences based on the given information. Being one of the most fundamental cognitive abilities that underlie any task requiring visualizing spatial relations, the visuospatial reasoning abilities are thought to be placing very high demands on the working memory capacity. Moreover, this association can be assumed to be varying across the preadolescent and adolescent years. The reason being that adolescent period cognitive understanding differs from that of the pre-adolescent period not only in more developed brain structures but also in more advanced integration of information, ability to form hypotheses and test those mentally, abstract visualization and increased working memory capacity. Additionally, as advocated by certain theories of cognitive development, psychosocial factors like home climate plays significant role in fostering cognitive development of the child. The present study therefore, intends to study the pattern of development of visuospatial reasoning abilities across pre-adolescent and adolescent years and how working memory and home climate are associated with the development of visuospatial reasoning abilities across the developmental years. 1. Introduction Our day starts with dismissing the alarm clock, crawling out of the bed, going to the bathroom, finding the toothbrush and so on. Every day we are faced with several such demands, not only at our homes, but on the road as well (e.g. crossing the road; driving; parking the car), at our workplace and at every other place we move about. But how do we do that? How do we move about our apartment without colliding with the furniture? On a busy road, how do we know when,