Background/Purpose Successful reaching requires identifying characteristics of the object and its surroundings, then creating a mental representation mapping the effector (hand) to the reach object. With the present study we determined the relationship between two tasks associated with reaching and measures of visual object and visual spatial ability.
Method Adult participants (N = 36) were administered the object and spatial scales of the Object-Spatial Imagery Questionnaire (OSIQ) and two objective reach-related tasks; one required use of motor imagery in estimating reach target distance (RT) and the other a perceptual task (PT) using visual imagery to estimate distance between targets. Previous reports using the OSIQ found positive correlations between scales and ‘objective' tasks of the same general category (object or spatial). We expected the closest relationship for both reach tasks would be with the spatial ability scale.
Analysis/Results Results indicated that none of the correlations were significantly positive. The only correlation that was moderately significant was between the RT and visual spatial ability and that was in a negative direction (- .37). Additional analysis, including stepwise linear regression with groups divided into LOW and HIGH RT and PT scores, revealed similar results.
Conclusions Possible explanations for the somewhat surprising results focused on the idea that the OSIQ scales do not correlate well with objective tasks involving a “metric” (distance) component, and questions from the OSIQ and our tasks tap different perceptual – cognitive processes.