Spatial abilities are not only fundamental for activities of daily living, but they are also markers of academic and professional success. It has remained a challenge, however, to understand their development across childhood and adolescence, partly because of the lack of spatial tasks that are appropriate across age groups. For example, the well-established paper-based mental rotation test (MRT) has been shown to be too difficult for children. In the current study, we tested girls and boys in three age groups: younger children (5–8-years-old), older children (9–12), and adolescents (13–17) on a hands-on visuospatial task using toy bricks: the brick-building task (BBT). Children completed a low- and a high-mental rotation demand (LMR and HMR) version of the BBT and the paper-based MRT. Correlations were found between all tasks. Children, especially females, found the HMR more challenging than the LMR condition, but all children successfully completed the BBT. In contrast, the MRT was too difficult for the younger children to solve performing at chance. Given this result and that the BBT is a game-like, 3D, interactive task, the BBT could be used to examine the biological and/or environmental factors that affect the early development of visuospatial abilities.

中文翻译：

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一次一砖：建立空间能力的发展概况

空间能力不仅是日常生活活动的基础，也是学术和职业成功的标志。然而，了解他们在童年和青春期的发展仍然是一个挑战，部分原因是缺乏适合不同年龄组的空间任务。例如，行之有效的纸质心理旋转测试 (MRT) 已被证明对儿童来说太难了。在目前的研究中，我们测试了三个年龄组的女孩和男孩：年幼的儿童（5-8 岁）、较大的儿童（9-12 岁）和青少年（13-17 岁），他们使用玩具积木：积木任务（BBT）。儿童完成了 BBT 和纸质 MRT 的低和高心理旋转需求（LMR 和 HMR）版本。在所有任务之间都发现了相关性。孩子们，尤其是女性，发现 HMR 比 LMR 条件更具挑战性，但所有孩子都成功完成了 BBT。相比之下，MRT 对于年幼的孩子来说太难了，无法解决随机表演问题。鉴于此结果以及 BBT 是一个类似游戏的 3D 交互式任务，BBT 可用于检查影响视觉空间能力早期发展的生物和/或环境因素。