EXPLORING SUB-ABILITIES WITHIN VISUAL-OBJECT ABILITY

Abstract

The current study seeks to investigate abilities in visualization with attention to object visualization ability and the possible sub-abilities that may exist within it. Past research has suggested a dissociation between visual-spatial and visual-object abilities and their processing systems as well as the possibility of similar dissociation occurring within visual object ability for shape, colour and texture processing. We hope to extend the findings of the functional and anatomical dissociation between the processing of the corresponding object properties to examine whether their separate processing can point towards separate abilities and whether the distinction between the abilities are present in adults as well children with developing visualization abilities. Measures of different component abilities of visualization were administered to undergraduates and secondary school student samples in two separate studies and exploratory factor analyses were conducted. Both studies found evidence for the existence of dissociation between shape, colour and texture sub-abilities as well as with visual-spatial ability although a spatial measure had shown some shared variance with visual object measures for the adult sample. Overall, results from the current study provides evidence for different sub-abilities of shape, colour and texture within visual-object ability and forms a foundation for future research into visual-object properties and sub-abilities.