People with Good Nonverbal Thinking Show High Scores in ‘Virtual Aircraft Landing’

We have used a 3-D studio to generate a situation of virtual aircraft landing with the object of investigating if everyone can solve this task successfully. A virtual surface was covered with green texture which had large grains. Landing had to be done at an angle of about 30°. The space above the surface was divided into seven adjacent layers. Landing began from the first layer and went through all the layers, the seven layer being adjacent to the surface. The task of the subject was to stop the virtual landing in a given layer by pressing a key and using only visual cues of approaching the surface. Seventh subjects participated in the experiment; each made about 180 – 300 trials. Two subjects showed the highest score (A-group); three could not solve this task at all (they worked at the level of guessing) (B-group); the remainder produced intermediate scores. At the same time all subjects were tested by means of standard verbal and nonverbal tests to evaluate the type of thinking. Subjects from the B-group had a clear verbal or mathematical type of thinking. On the contrary, subjects from the A-group had the highest scores in the Kettel and Raven tests (tests for nonverbal thinking). Moreover the two subjects from the A-group had the highest level of driver skill in comparison with the others. Thus individuals with poor nonverbal thinking appear to perform worse at sensory-motor activities such as driving and aircraft landing.