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Visuospatial Judgment Associated With Age

Visuospatial judgment is not a measure of how well you see, but how well you retain and interpret what you see. The standard test of visuospatial judgment is called the Judgment of Line Orientation Test, developed by Arthur Benton, Ph.D. It takes about five minutes and measures how accurately you perceive and remember the direction of various lines in the test.

  1. What it Measures

    • Visuospatial judgment is a measure of normal brain function. If you see a cube and remember it as a rectangular box, something is amiss with your cognitive functions. Obviously, people who have the ability to draw or paint very realistic scenes have extremely high visuospatial judgment, accurately remembering very complex and subtle changes of angle in the lines of what they see. The line orientation test will not predict the artistic ability of a child, as that is a function of both visuospatial judgment and fine motor skills. Rather, it measures whether the visual data you see is interpreted accurately.

    Developmental Stages

    • Children as young as 7 years old can be tested for their level of visuospatial judgment. At this age, the judgment is still developing, and children may make simple drawings that deviate wildly from what they are trying to draw. By the age of 13, there is no statistically significant difference between a child's visuospatial judgment and that of a normal, mature adult.

    Effects of Aging

    • Once a person achieves normal visuospatial judgment, he retains it all his life under normal circumstances. He may have trouble seeing a particular thing as his vision declines, but he will be able to accurately process what he actually can see. If there is a failure in a person who has previously been normal, it is a sign of a neurological malfunction, such as a stroke, incipient dementia or even the onset of Parkinson's Disease. Some of these conditions create a particular type of distortion in the interpretation of visual data. In those cases, the judgment of line orientation test can become an important diagnostic tool.

    Injury

    • The judgment of line orientation test is most frequently used in people who have suffered a head trauma in which brain damage is suspected. If a woman has suffered a head injury and scores poorly on the test, it will confirm that some brain damage has occurred. Once again, the nature of the errors she makes on the test can give neurologists important clues as to what area of the brain is affected and how it might be treated.

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