The Experimental Study On The Relationship Between Spatial Memory Expertise And Intelligence

Spatial memory expertise is one of the most important fields of memory expertise research. It is very important and meaningful to study the relationship between intelligence and spatial memory expertise. First, it can help to understand intelligence's effect on the process of expertise development; Second, experts and novices have different points on spatial memory, it can provide novices with some useful suggestions and methods to become experts as soon as possible.This paper studies the relationship between spatial memory expertise and intelligence using behavioral indicator methods. The assumptions are that IQ(Intellience Quotient) has different effects on spatial memory expertise at three kinds of tasks, experience may mainly affect spatial memory expertise. There are two groups of participants: experienced taxi drivers and postgraduate students. Their IQ is measured by Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices, there is significant difference between taxi drivers' IQ and postgraduate students' IQ. The experimental tasks of this paper are of three different kinds: expertise task A, expertise task B, intelligence task. The main behavioral indicators are reaction time and memory achievements.The results show that: rich experiences can compensate IQ's weakness, especially when experiences and IQ act simultaneously in spatial memory, IQ doesn't correlate significantly with spatial memory expertise, but experiences correlate significantly with spatial memory expertise. There is no significant difference between participants' ages and their reaction time and achievements; there is significant difference between taxi drivers' driving experience and their reaction time and achievements. Compared to memory reaction time, memory achievements are more valid indicators of one's spatial memory expertise.The results indicate that, novices should do more exercise to accumulate rich experience and not think highly of one's IQ. Once there is an elaborate knowledge base in expertise field, experience is more important than IQ to affect one's spatial memory expertise. So novices can become experts quickly by more exercise and rich experience.