Object-Spatial Imagery and Verbal Questionnaire
 

Object-Spatial Imagery and Verbal Questionnaire (OSIVQ) is a self-report questionnaire designed to distinguish between three different types of people: 1) object imagers who prefer to construct vivid, concrete and detailed images of individual objects (e.g., visual artists), 2) spatial imagers who prefer to use imagery to schematically represent spatial relations among objects and to perform complex spatial transformations (e.g., scientists), and 3) verbalizers who prefer to use verbal-analytical tools to solve cognitive tasks (e.g., philosophers and linguists).

The new instrument was successfully validated in behavioral studies conducted in Prof. Maria Kozhevnikov' Lab (Department of Psychology, George Mason University), administering the battery of imagery paper-and-pencil and computerized tests, and verbal and non-verbal intelligence tests (see pdf). The OSIVQ Questionnaire is copyrighted jointly by MM Virtual Design, LLC and Rutgers University.

The OSIVQ Questionnaire is a valuable tool for educational and psychological communities since it will help teachers, educators and psychologists to evaluate cognitive styles of their students and their preferred methods to learn. Some ultimately useful application of this questionnaire is to facilitate a personnel selection for specific types of tasks that require different cognitive skills (e.g., visual artists, architects and scientists).

When all three types of thinkers (object imagers, spatial imagers and verbalizers) are taken into account, the students' preference to one of the strategies is directly related to their performance on either mathematical, object imagery ability or spatial ability tests. Thus, it is of great advantage, especially for large-scale studies, to use our OSIVQ questionnaire, which is only under ten minutes long, in order to predict not only one's cognitive style, but also his/her verbal/analytical and mental imagery abilities.

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