Measuring Spatial Ability for Talent Identification, Educational Assessment, and Support: Evidence from Adolescents with High Achievement in Science, Arts, and Sports

Abstract

Background. Spatial ability (SA) is a robust predictor of academic and occupational achievement. The present study investigated the psychometric properties of 10 tests for measuring of SA in a sample of talented schoolchildren. Objective. Our purpose was to identify the most suitable measurements for SA for the purpose of talent identification, educational assessment, and support. Design. Our sample consisted of 1479 schoolchildren who had demonstrated high achievement in Science, Arts, or Sports. Several criteria were applied to evaluate the measurements, including an absence of floor and ceiling effects, low redundancy, high reliability, and external validity. Results. Based on these criteria, we included the following four tests in an Online Short Spatial Ability Battery “OSSAB”: Pattern Assembly; Mechanical Reasoning; Paper Folding; and Shape Rotation. Further analysis found differences in spatial ability across the three groups of gifted adolescents. The Science track showed the highest results in all four tests. Conclusion. Overall, the study suggested that the Online Short Spatial Ability Battery (OSSAB) can be used for talent identification, educational assessment, and support. The analysis showed a unifactorial structure of spatial abilities. Future research is needed to evaluate the use of this battery with other specific samples and unselected populations.

No evidence of a positive effect of learning Chinese language as an L2 on spatial ability

“…Our results on differences between language group in intelligence are consistent with differences in achievement, intelligence and other psychological characteristic found between selected and unselected for prior achievement groups 40 , 61 , 53 . For example, one study 52 showed that STEM-selected adolescents demonstrated higher year grades and state exams results ( η p 2 = 0.05 and 0.23, respectively), compared with their unselected peers.…”

“…In addition, several recent studies have pointed out that Year grade has a number of limitations, e.g. teacher bias towards students’ personality; and inability to distinguish between populations selected for high-achievement in Science and their peers (see Likhanov et al 54 , Papageorgiou et al 55 and Budakova et al 40 , for a discussion of the limitations of this grading system). See Appendix for descriptive statistics and correlations for these Year grades.…”

“Complete the Drawing!”: The Relationship between Imagination and Executive Functions in Children

“…In other words, members of this culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations. This feature can significantly shape children's imagination development and the educational practices supporting it [62,63].…”

This is the way: Network perspective on targets for spatial ability development programmes

“…specific patterns of the links between SA facets or centrality indices distributions within networks) are linked to success in STEM beyond links with individual differences in level of SA (e.g. Budakova et al, 2021; Wai et al, 2009). Furthermore, there might be sex differences in SA networks that exist above and beyond reported average sex differences in SA (Tosto et al, 2014), (Toivainen et al, 2018).…”