Visual and auditory object recognition in relation to spatial ability.

The domain-general ability to recognize objects at the subordinate level (o) is most often testedin the visual modality. However, previous work has evidenced a strong relationship betweenvisual and auditory o abilities, suggesting that o may be multimodal. We measured thisrelationship using a structural equation modeling approach. We found a strong relationship (r =.79) between visual and auditory o. There were similarly strong relationships between spatialability and both visual (r = .73) and auditory (r = .63) o. When the shared influence of generalability was controlled for, the relationship between visual and auditory o remained substantial (r= .61), while relationships between spatial ability and visual (r = .31) and auditory o (r = .05)were non-significant. These results suggest that individual differences in object recognition arelargely multimodal, and that the relationship between o and spatial ability is not clearlyindependent of general ability.