§ Abstract
Individual differences in visual working memory precision have been proposed to underliespatial cognitive abilities, yet empirical evidence for these relationships relies primarily onsummary statistics that may obscure meaningful distributional information. We examinedwhether error distribution parameters from visual working memory tasks predict performanceacross visuospatial domains. Using circular statistical mixture modeling, we extracted con-centration parameters representing memory precision from orientation recall errors in 148adults who completed visual working memory, mental rotation, and imagery vividness tasks.We tested whether individual differences in precision parameters predicted mental rotationaccuracy and reaction times across angular disparities, as well as self-reported visual imageryvividness, while controlling for domain-general cognitive factors including overall accuracyand task engagement. Although mixture modeling successfully characterized individual dif-ferences in memory precision, relationships with spatial performance were predominantlynegligible in magnitude despite occasional statistical significance. Mental rotation accuracyshowed significant odds ratios between 1.04 and 1.06 per unit increase in precision, whilereaction time relationships yielded standardized coefficients of approximately -0.02. No signif-icant relationships emerged between memory precision and imagery vividness ratings. Thesefindings challenge theoretical assumptions that visual working memory precision and spatialabilities share substantial common mechanisms. The results suggest that correlations betweenvisuospatial tasks may reflect domain-general factors rather than precision-specific processes,necessitating more nuanced accounts of the cognitive architecture underlying spatial cogni-tion and highlighting the importance of distinguishing statistical significance from practicalimportance in individual differences research