The experiment attempts to assess the subject's reasoning 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.
^Ross Vasta; Lynn S. Liben (December 1996). "The Water-Level Task: An Intriguing Puzzle". Current Directions in Psychological Science. 5 (6): 171-177 – via JSTOR. - Wesley Jamison; Margaret L. Signorella (June 1980). "Sex-typing and spatial ability: The association between masculinity and success on piaget's water-level task". Sex Roles. 6: 345–353. doi:10.1007/BF00287356. - Eva Geiringer; Janet Hyde (June 1976). "Sex differences on Piaget's water-level task: Spatial ability incognito". Perceptual and Motor Skills. 42 (3, Pt 2): 1323-132. - Seth C. Kalichmna (September 1988). "Individual differences in water-level task performance: A component-skills analysis". Developmental Review. 8 (3): 273-295. doi:10.1016/0273-2297(88)90007-X. - Lynn S Liben. "The Piagetian water-level task: Looking beneath the surface". Annals of child development. 8: 81-143.
^Barbel Inhelder; Jean Piaget (1964). The Early Growth of Logic in the Child. The International Library of Psychology. Routledge. ISBN978-0415210010. - Ross Vasta R; Jill A. Knott; Christine E. Gaze. "Can Spatial Training Erase the Gender Differences on the Water-Level Task?". Psychology of Women Quarterly. 20 (4). doi:10.1111/j.1471-6402.1996.tb00321.x.