The water-level task is an
experiment in
developmental and
cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
developed by
Jean Piaget.
The experiment attempts to assess the subject's
reasoning
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, lang ...
ability in
spatial relations. To do so the subject is shown pictures depicting various shaped
bottles with a
water level marked, then shown pictures of the bottles tilted on different
angles without the level marked, and the subject is asked to mark where the water level would be.
Sex differences in performance
The water level task has been of interest to psychologists due to puzzling sex differences in performance of the task. Multiple studies have indicated that female participants fail the task at a significantly higher rate than male participants.
References
Psychology experiments
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