Cross-Cultural Differences in Spatial Abilities and Solution Strategies— An Investigation in Cambodia and Germany

Abstract

Cultural differences in performance and solution strategies on the Mental Rotations Test (MRT;Peters et al., 1995;Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978) and the Cube Comparison Test (CCT; Amthauer, Brocke, Liepmann, & Beauducel, 2001) were studied in 656 Cambodian and German students. Germans outperformed Cambodians on both the MRT (d = 1.57) and CCT (d = 0.99). The large differences could be explained by Cambodian participants being more prone to analytic strategies, whereas most Germans preferred a holistic strategy. Sex differences on the MRT in favor of males were found in both Cambodia (d = 0.37) and Germany (d = 0.87). On the CCT, sex differences with males outperforming females were only found for the German sample (d = 0.43). In both samples, more females preferred an analytic solution strategy, whereas more males tended to use a holistic strategy. We argue that the huge differences between nations can partly be attributed to differences in the mathematics curriculum.Spatial skills are important for many professions such as science, architecture, engineering, graphical studies, and medicine, but also for daily life activities, including such things as parking a car, orientation and navigation in a new environment, manual work, and mechanical skills. Consequently, spatial abilities have been investigated in a great number of studies across different disciplines.There are two specific aspects of spatial abilities that have received much attention in the literature. First are sex differences in favor of males that occur consistently for some facets of spatial ability and are especially large for problems involving mental rotation (MR) of three-dimensional objects. Second is the question of whether individuals use different solution strategies to solve

The acquisition of problem solving competence: evidence from 41 countries that math and science education matters

“…The findings regarding the positive confounders are in line with and also extend a number of studies on cross-country differences in education (e.g., Blömeke et al 2011;Dronkers et al 2014;Janssen and Geiser 2012;Risch 2010). Ross and Hogaboam-Gray (1998), for instance, found that students benefit from an integrated curriculum, particularly in terms of motivation and the development of their abilities.…”

“…It can be speculated that education in these countries is more geared towards math education and modelling processes in mathematical scenarios, whilst the aspect of problem solving in science is less emphasised (Janssen and Geiser 2012). The results of multilevel regression analyses supported this interpretation by showing that math competence was a stronger predictor of problem solving competence.…”

“…For instance, as Janssen and Geiser (2012) and Blömeke et al (2011) suggested, the developmental status of a country, measured by the Human Development Index (HDI; UNDP 2005), is positively related to students' academic achievements as well as to teachers' quality of teaching. Furthermore, the socio-economic status of a country co-determines characteristics of its educational system, which ultimately affects a construct referred to as national intelligence (Lynn and Meisenberg 2010).…”

On the relationship between solution strategies in two mental rotation tasks

“…Previous studies have consistently shown that five latent classes appropriately characterize strategy differences on the MRT (Geiser et al, 2006;Janssen & Geiser, 2009), whereas either two or three latent classes appropriately characterize strategy differences on the CCT (Glück et al, 2002;Hosenfeld et al, 1997;Janssen & Geiser, 2009;Köller et al, 1994). We therefore specified an LTA model with five latent classes for the MRT and three latent classes for the CCT.…”

“…Undergraduate students received € 5 for their participation. The sample was a subsample from a larger investigation on cross-cultural differences in solution strategies (Janssen & Geiser, 2009). …”