Strategy selection versus flexibility: Using eye-trackers to investigate strategy use during mental rotation.

Abstract

Spatial researchers have been arguing over the optimum cognitive strategy for spatial problem-solving for several decades. The current article aims to shift this debate from strategy dichotomies to strategy flexibility—a cognitive process, which although alluded to in spatial research, presents practical methodological challenges to empirical testing. In the current study, participants’ eye movements were tracked during a mental rotation task (MRT) using the Tobii ×60 eye-tracker. Results of a latent profile analysis, combining different eye movement parameters, indicated two distinct eye-patterns—fixating and switching patterns. The switching eye-pattern was associated with high mental rotation performance. There were no sex differences in eye-patterns. To investigate strategy flexibility, we used a novel application of the changepoint detection algorithm on eye movement data. Strategy flexibility significantly predicted mental rotation performance. Male participants demonstrated higher strategy flexibility than did female participants. Our findings highlight the importance of strategy flexibility in spatial thinking and have implications for designing spatial training techniques. The novel approaches to analyzing eye movement data in the current paper can be extended to research beyond the spatial domain.

Mental rotation with abstract and embodied objects as stimuli: evidence from event-related potential (ERP)

“…Another argument supporting differential processing of stimuli in a mental rotation task is the fact that the fixation patterns have been shown by Nazareth et al (2019) to differ. In their recently published study, the participants' eye movements during an object-based mental rotation task with abstract figures were tracked (Nazareth et al 2019).…”

“…Another argument supporting differential processing of stimuli in a mental rotation task is the fact that the fixation patterns have been shown by Nazareth et al (2019) to differ. In their recently published study, the participants' eye movements during an object-based mental rotation task with abstract figures were tracked (Nazareth et al 2019). The results (latent profile analysis that combined different eye movement parameters) indicated two distinct eye-patterns: fixating (indicating a holistic strategy) and switching (indicating a piecemeal strategy).…”

“…The switching eye-pattern was related to high mental rotation performance. Furthermore, the flexibility of the use of a strategy has been calculated (Nazareth et al 2019). One possibility to detect differences in strategy use would be to investigate if abstract and embodied figures evoke a different eye-pattern strategy or more flexibility in strategy use.…”

Childhood wayfinding experience explains sex and individual differences in adult wayfinding strategy and anxiety

“…With the exception of mental rotation, reported sex differences in spatial skills are typically small (Nazareth, Huang, Voyer, & Newcombe, 2019) and/or do not emerge until after puberty (Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995). While the basis for sex differences in spatial cognition is still debated, recent explanations suggest that males have more spatial experience (i.e., wayfinding experience) than females do (Lawton & Kallai, 2002;Schug, 2016b), that different strategies for solving spatial problems may contribute to sex differences (Lawton, 1994(Lawton, , 1996Nazareth, Killick, Dick, & Pruden, 2019;Stieff, Dixon, Ryu, Kumi, & Hegarty, 2014), and that wayfinding-specific spatial anxiety is related to both perceived and actual navigation ability (Lyons et al, 2018). In the current study, we examined the relationships between self-reported childhood wayfinding experience, the use of different wayfinding strategies, and wayfinding anxiety with the goal of explaining sex and individual differences.…”

An assessment of practitioners approaches to forecasting in the presence of changepoints

“…Structural breaks and changepoints occur in time series data arising from a variety of fields, including medicine, 1 environment, 2,3 psychology, 4 and finance 5 . A key goal in many applications is to understand the dynamics of a time series to produce accurate forecasts into the future.…”