Visual and auditory object recognition in relation to spatial ability

The general ability to recognize objects at the subordinate level (o) is most often tested in the visual modality. However, previous work has evidenced a strong relationship between visual and auditory o abilities, suggesting that o may be multimodal. We measured this relationship using a structural equation modeling approach. We found a strong relationship (r = .79) between visual and auditory o. There were similarly strong relationships between spatial ability and both visual (r = .73) and auditory (r = .63) o. When the shared influence of general ability 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 are largely multimodal, and that the relationship between o and spatial ability is not clearly independent of general ability.