Research on spatial thinking needs reliable and valid measures of individual differences in skills.
Visuospatial Perspective Taking (PT)—the ability to mentally maintain and transform spatial
relationships between objects within an environment—is one kind of spatial skill that is
especially relevant to navigation and building cognitive maps. However, the psychometric
properties of various PT tasks have yet to be examined. The present study examines three main
psychometric properties of PT tasks: 1) the reliability of two tasks developed for children but
adapted in difficulty level for use in adult populations, 2) item difficulty and discriminability
within and between four tasks using item response theory, and 3) relation of scores with general
intelligence, working memory, and mental rotation. Results showed that two of the four PT tasks
have promising psychometric properties for measuring a wide range of PT ability based on item
difficulty, discriminability, and efficiency of a test information function.