Exploring the Spatial Ability of Undergraduate Students: Association With Gender, STEM Majors, and Gifted Program Membership

Abstract

Spatial ability has been valued as a talent domain and as an assessment form that reduces cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic status biases, yet little is known of the spatial ability of students in gifted programs compared with those in general education. Spatial ability is considered an important indicator of potential talent in the domains of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This study explored undergraduate students’ spatial ability, focusing on mental rotation, by investigating the relationships of three variables with performance on a spatial ability test, in terms of test scores and test completion time. A three-way analysis of variance revealed statistically significant main effects of gifted program participation, choice of academic major, and gender, suggesting that students who participated in a gifted program, who majored in a STEM discipline, or who were male outperformed their counterparts on a measure of spatial ability when the other conditions were equivalent. No interaction effects existed among the three variables, indicating that none of them functioned as a moderator of students’ performance on the spatial ability assessment. However, when spatial ability was considered as a mediating variable in a path model, gender had the largest total effect on the probability of students majoring in a STEM area. In addition, the more time students spent on the spatial ability test, the better they tended to perform, which is a finding inconsistent with current literature.

Logical Reasoning, Spatial Processing, and Verbal Working Memory: Longitudinal Predictors of Physics Achievement at Age 12–13 Years

“…The interpretation and comprehension of these forms of visual-spatial representations should theoretically place demands on the individual’s spatial processing abilities (Hegarty, 2014; Stieff and Uttal, 2015; Newcombe, 2016; Verdine et al, 2017). Consistent with the assumption, numerous studies on adults show that measures of spatial ability such as mental rotation and spatial visualization are predictive of concurrent and future accomplishment in science (Hegarty and Sims, 1994 spatial visualization; Paper Folding Test; speeded rotation, spatial orientation; Kell et al, 2013 spatial visualization; Kozhevnikov et al, 2007 spatial visualization; Shea et al, 2001; Wai et al, 2009 spatial visualization; Webb et al, 2007 mental rotation; Yoon and Mann, 2017 mental rotation). Furthermore, a few intervention studies provide evidence that training spatial ability can improve science learning in university students (Sorby, 2009; Miller and Halpern, 2013).…”

The Development of a Multidimensional Diagnostic Assessment With Learning Tools to Improve 3-D Mental Rotation Skills

“…The revised test is named as revised PSVT:R. Since then, the revised PSVT:R has been used in several studies to investigate the psychometric properties of the test questions through Item Response Theory (IRT) Models . They were also used to explore the association of the spatial ability of undergraduate students with gender, STEM majors and gifted program membership (Yoon and Mann, 2017).…”

Gender Differences in Visuospatial Abilities and Complex Mathematical Problem Solving

“…Robert and Chevrier (2003) reported similar numbers of correct answers among men and women when no time limit was established in mental rotation test, although men answered the items more quickly than women. Whilst some studies showed that such gender differences are more pronounced when the time to do the test is limited in mental rotation test (Voyer and Saunders, 2004;Peters, 2005;Voyer, 2011;Maeda and Yoon, 2016), others designed to assess mental rotation aptitudes reported no statistically significant differences between the sexes in completion time (Yoon and Mann, 2017). A third group observed males to score higher on visual tests irrespective of the existence of time limitations in mental rotation test (Delgado and Prieto, 1996;Geiser et al, 2006) or other figure analogy test (Blum et al, 2015).…”