A new spatial ability test was administered online to 223 undergraduate students enrolled in introductory science courses. The 30-item multiple choice test measures individual differences in ability to identify the two-dimensional cross section of a three-dimensional geometric solid, a skill that has been identified as important in science,…

The importance of spatial ability for success in a variety of domains, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), is widely acknowledged. Yet, students with high spatial ability are rarely identified, as Talent Searches for academically talented students focus on identifying high mathematical and verbal abilities.…

Published articles on spatial ability can be found in the fields of psychology and graphics education. In the "Engineering Design Graphics Journal" for 1936-1978, six articles concerning visualization (spatial ability) were listed. As published graphics research increased, the journal (1975-1996) listed 28 articles in the visualization…

Spatial skills have been shown to be important to success in an engineering curriculum, and some question if poor spatial skills prevent students from entering STEM fields or if students with weak spatial skills avoid engineering disciplines believed to highly spatially-oriented. Veurink and Hamlin (2011) found that freshmen students entering…

It is well established that girls and boys perform differently in traditional examinations in most countries. This study looks at a sample of 754 school students in Kuwait (aged about 13) and explores how boys and girls differ in the performance in a range of tests related to learner characteristics. The fundamental question is how boys and girls…

Understanding how responses become prepotent is essential for understanding when inhibitory control is needed in everyday behaviour. We investigated prepotency in the grass-snow task--in which a child points to a green card when the experimenter says "snow" and a white card when the experimenter says "grass". Experiment 1 (n =…

Compared to normal readers, the dyslexic children not only drew significantly more "neolithic faces" but also made more errors of spatial displacement (up/down or right/left) on parts of asymmetric figures, while among both groups there were similar percentages who made no errors in the global rotation of figures. (Author/SJL)

This study was designed to investigate the importance of spatial encoding in reading, with particular emphasis on visuo-spatial encoding mechanisms. Thirty one school children participated in the first study in which they were measured on their ability to solve a centrally presented spatial encoding task, as well as their sensitivity to the…

Three experiments involving 107 adults who performed mental rotation tasks explored how location information is incorporated into image representation. Results suggest that image is coded retinotopically in image representations and that there is no spatiotropic transform in the early stages of visual processing. (SLD)

Spatial visualization is a fundamental skill in technical graphics and engineering designs. From conventional multiview drawing to modern solid modeling using computer-aided design, visualization skills have always been essential for representing three-dimensional objects and assemblies. Researchers have developed various types of tests to measure…

Two processing abilities used to solve spatial problems are examined: (1) the analog ability of structural visualization; and (2) the non-analog ability of verbal analytic reasoning. The distinction is based on an evaluation of information processing theory and a review of process-oriented studies of individual differences. Criteria are presented…

As part of a larger experiment to study computer-based methods of teaching Othello, 24 subjects who had never played the game were pretested with visual-spatial tests. After 16 games of Othello, subjects were tested on knowledge of the game. Correlations of pretest and posttest scores were computed. (LMO)

A rather consistent finding in studies of perceived (imagined) compared to actual movement in a reaching paradigm is the tendency to overestimate at midline. Explanations of such behavior have focused primarily on perceptions of postural constraints and the notion that individuals calibrate reachability in reference to multiple degrees of freedom,…

Spatial skills are known to vary widely among normal individuals. This project was designed to address whether these individual differences are differentially related to large-scale environmental learning from route (ground-level) and survey (aerial) perspectives. Participants learned two virtual environments (route and survey) with limited…

Examines the ability of infants to track and anticipate the final orientation of an object. Subjects were infants ranging from an average of four months to eight months old. Three experiments, with the last one as control, were carried out. Concludes that infants show some rudimentary mental rotation from four months of age. (MOK)