It is commonly accepted that the mental representation and processing of number and of space are tightly linked. This is evident from studies showing relations between math ability and visuospatial skill. Also, math instruction and education rely strongly on visuospatial tools and strategies. The dominant explanation for these number-space interactions is that the mental representation of numbe...

Although vision offers distinctive information to space representation, individuals who lack vision since birth often show perceptual and representational skills comparable to those found in sighted individuals. However, congenitally blind individuals may result in impaired spatial analysis, when engaging in 'visual' spatial features (e.g., perspective or angle representation) or complex spatia...

This study addresses the interrelations between human wayfinding performance, the mental representation of routes, and the geometrical layout of path intersections. The virtual reality based empirical experiment consisted of a route learning and reproduction task and two choice reaction tasks measuring the acquired knowledge of route decision points. In order to relate the recorded behavioural ...

In mental rotation, a mental representation of an object must be rotated while the actual object remains visible. Where is this representation stored while it is being rotated? To answer this question, observers were asked to perform a mental rotation task during the delay interval of a visual working memory task. When the working memory task required the storage of object features, substantial...

We introduce an approach for how spatial reasoning can be conceived as verbal reasoning. We describe a theory of how humans construct a mental representation given onedimensional spatial relations. In this construction process objects are inserted in a dynamic structure called a “queue” which provides an implicit direction. The spatial interpretation of this direction can be chosen freely. This...

Via training, dance experts develop special experience-based embodied representations of body and movement. Professional dancers, amateurs and novices sorted central functional nodes of two dance movements according to their spatial equivalence. Results of a hierarchical cluster analysis and classification probabilities revealed movement-specific differences in mental representations related to...

What type of mental representation underlies the gestures that accompany speech? We used a dual-task paradigm to compare the demands gesturing makes on visuospatial and verbal working memories. Participants in one group remembered a string of letters (verbal working memory group) and those in a second group remembered a visual grid pattern (visuospatial working memory group) while explaining ma...

This study investigated the cognitive profile and the cerebral perfusion pattern in a highly educated 70 year old gentleman with posterior cortical atrophy (PCA). Visuo-perceptual abilities, spatial memory, spatial representation and navigation, visuo-spatial mental imagery, semantic and episodic-autobiographical memory were assessed. Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was imaged with SPECT. C...

Over the past two-and-a-half decades, numerous empirical studies have demonstrated a relationship between numbers and space. A classic interpretation is that these spatialnumerical associations (SNAs) are a product of a stable mental number line (MNL) in the mind, yet others have argued that SNAs are a product of transient mappings that occur in working memory. Importantly, although the latter ...