Spatial Reasoning: the Effect of Training for Adults and Children

The mental models theory of relational reasoning postulates that individuals reason by constructing the possible models of the situation described by the premises. The present article reports two experiments about spatial relational reasoning and focuses on the possibility of training In Experiment 1, we compared two different training methods, one in line with the mental models theory and one in line with the rule-based account Both accuracy and training data supported the mental models theory. In Experiment 2, we compared different training methods for children. Again, results were in line with the mental models theory.