Measuring Spatial Intelligence and Memory for Location: Athletes v. Non-Athletes

Indianapolis, IN

The question for this research was whether athletes participating in team sports have better spatial abilities and memory for location than non-athletes. On spatial tasks, athletes, due to extensive experience in tracking the location of objects and teammates in relation to spatial layouts, were predicted to outperform their non-athlete counterparts. Likewise, while everyday short-term memory should be equivalent for athletes and non-athletes, memory for location was hypothesized to be better for athletes. To test the expectation of everyday short-term memory, strings of letters were presented for participants to recall immediately. Athletes and non-athletes were equivalent in this typical short-term memory task, suggesting that any difference in performance on other tasks was due to a more specialized form of memory. To test memory for location, a computer monitor presented a moving object among a varying number of distracters and with or without a landmark. Participants recalled the beginning and ending locations of the moving object. As expected, memory performance decreased with an increase in the number of distracters, more so for non-athletes. When a landmark was unavailable, there was a greater disparity in memory performance between athletes and non-athletes as athletes performed much better. These results suggest that athletes have augmented spatial abilities through consistent practice. Facilitation of memory for location is believed to be due to the increased ability of the athletes to use the spatial coordinates of the landmark as a reference for the location of the object.