Spatial reasoning
no need for visual information
pp. 447-457
in: Daniel D. Montello (ed), Spatial information theory, Berlin, Springer, 2001Abstract
One of the central questions of spatial reasoning research is whether the underlying processes are inherently visual or spatial. The article reports a dual-task experiment that was conducted to explore the visual and/or spatial nature of human spatial reasoning. The main tasks were inferences based on a spatial version of the interval calculus introduced by Allen (1983). The secondary tasks were presented visually or acoustically, and were either spatial or non-spatial. The results indicate that spatial reasoning is mainly based on the construction and inspection of spatial layouts, whereas no evidence of the involvement of visual representations and processes was found.