Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Spatial construction—creating or copying spatialarrangements—is a hallmark of human spatial cognition.Spatial construction appears early in development, predictslater spatial and mathematical skills, and is used throughoutlife. Despite its importance, we know little about the cognitiveprocesses underlying skilled construction. Construction tasksare highly complex but analyses have tended to focus onbroad-stroke measures of end-goal accuracy. In this paper weintroduce a novel behavioral coding formalism to characterizean individual’s entire construction process, examine manyindividuals’ processes in aggregate, and summarize patternsthat emerge. The results show high consistency at certainpoints occurring throughout the construction, but also indicateflexibility in the interim paths that lead to and diverge fromthese points. Our approach offers a new method that can moreprecisely describe the behavioral patterns observed duringconstruction in order to reveal the underlying cognitiveprocesses engaged, and capture individual differences inbuilding expertise.