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The Good News About Spatial Skills

6/12/2012

 
There is a great deal of attention paid to and controversy about, the promise of training working memory to improve academic skills, a topic I wrote about here.

But working memory is not the only cognitive process that might be a candidate for training. Spatial skills are a good predictor of success in science, mathematics, and engineering.

Now on the basis of a new meta-analysis (Uttal, Meadow, Tipton, Hand, Alden, Warren & Newcombe, in press) researchers claim that spatial skills are eminently trainable. In fact they claim a quite respectable average effect size of 0.47 (Hedge's g) after training (that's across 217 studies).

Training tasks across these many studies included things like visualizing 2D and 3D objects in a CAD program, acrobatic sports training, and learning to use a laparascope (an angled device used by surgeons). Outcome measures were equally varied, and included standard psychometric measures (like a paper-folding test), tests that demanded imagining oneself in a landscape, and tests that required mentally rotating objects.

Even more impressive:

1) researchers found robust transfer to new tasks
2) researchers found little, if any effect of delay between training and test--the skills don't seem to fade with time, at least for several weeks. (Only four studies included delays of greater than one month.)

This is a long, complex analysis and I won't try to do it justice in a brief blog post. But the marquee finding is big news. What we'd love to see is an intervention that is relatively brief, not terribly difficult to implement, reliably leads to improvement, and transfers to new academic tasks.

That's a tall order, but spatial skills may fill all the requirements.

The figure below (from the paper) is a conjecture--if spatial training were widely implemented, and once scaled up we got the average improvement we see in these studies,  how many more people could be trained as engineers?
Picture
The paper is not publicly available, but there is a nice summary here from the collaborative laboratory responsible for the work. I also recommend this excellent article from American Educator on the relationship of spatial thinking to math and science, with suggestions for parents and teachers.

Uttal, D. H., Meadow, N. G., Tipton, E., Hand, L. L., Alden, A. R., Warren, C., & Newcombe, N.S. (2012, June 4). The Malleability of Spatial Skills: A Meta-Analysis of Training Studies. Psychological Bulletin. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0028446

Newcombe, N. S. (2010) Picture this: Increasing math and science learning by improving spatial thinking. American Educator, Summer, 29-35, 43.

Jay
6/12/2012 10:45:32 am

Interesting finding. Might training in certain foreign languages (e.g. Chinese) be an effective intervention? It's been suggested previously that learning to read in certain languages improves spatial ability (source below).

http://www.psy.cuhk.edu.hk/en/people/cmcbride/Journal_PDF/116.VisualSpatialSkillAConsequenceOfLearningToRead.pdf

Dan Willingham link
6/13/2012 02:20:39 am

Interesting finding. . . although studying Chinese for the sake of improved spatial skill (if you weren't otherwise planning to learn it) seems like a pretty big commitment!

ryan
7/18/2012 01:54:26 am

Great stuff. Sports might be have an impact on spatial ability as well. Excellent article here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608012000970

Heike Larson link
6/13/2012 06:46:48 am

Are there any special approaches to training spacial skills that are accessible? I am wondering if Montessori preschool & elementary school education would have an impact, as Montessori preschool students work with structured, hands-on materials to explore spacial dimensions in many different ways.

BTW, I cannot open the American Educator article you refer to; it comes up blank on the link (and I'd love to read it, too!)

Dan willingham link
6/13/2012 06:58:49 am

I would have the same intuition about Montessori classrooms that you do, but I don't know of much evidence on the issue. Angel Lillard actually found that spatial reasoning (as tested by the Woodcock-Johnson) was NOT affected
http://coedi.edu.mx/documents/revistascience2006ni%C3%B1osmontessoriestudio.pdf

Not sure why the link isn't working. . it's working ok for me. . .you should be able to find it on the American Educator website too.

T.S.
6/14/2012 06:51:01 am

I thought that I would provide another link for Lillard's paper: http://www.montessori- ami.org/research/ScienceLillard060929.pdf

In reading the paper, I could only find information for spatial reasoning when tested at age 5. I was not able to find any correlating data for 12 year olds on spatial relationships (perhaps I missed it?). I also looked through supporting documentation found here: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2006/09/26/313.5795.1893.DC1/Lillard.SOM.pdf

I wonder if Lillard's findings concerning 5 year olds can be attributed to developmental stages, similar to the ideas of theory of mind and conservation?

Here are links to videos that demonstrate these concepts (for anyone interested):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLj0IZFLKvg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu1cQezTtlY

Here is a link to a series of brief articles on the subject of spatial thinking and developmental stages:
http://nrich.maths.org/2483/2483

If developmental stages are in play, then is it possible that Lillard's findings could be what we would expect to find when testing a group of young children in a certain age range (when even months can make a difference)?

OR...

perhaps a entirely different explanation might be ...similar to the findings of the Stroop test (i.e. that young children who cannot read are faster and better than adults -or peers who can read, on the test because they do not posses previous knowledge that interferes with their ability to quickly perceive color apart from the word). Perhaps Montessori children are at a disadvantage because of their extensive previous experiences when compared to similar aged cohorts concerning spatial relationships (and have to inhibit their inclinations to look for certain geometric principles or patterns when responding to the measures on WJ )?

https://vimeo.com/23054409
https://vimeo.com/41084889
https://vimeo.com/41167119

I realize that I am presenting two completely different explanations for the same event (and I am only guessing at that : D), but I think that this points to the real need for more research on Montessori. You are right that there is a lack of research, and therefore evidence, concerning this model. Hopefully there will be more researchers willing to look into this! : D

Heike Larson link
6/14/2012 08:14:31 am

Dan, T.S.: thanks so much for your responses. T.S.: the materials in these videos were exactly the type of activities I was thinking of. That article with the drawings of children at different developmental stages is fascinating; thanks for sharing! I totally agree that it would be great for researchers to do more Montessori-focused studies: I bet there is a lot to be learned!

Dan Willingham link
6/15/2012 03:01:36 am

TS thanks very much for this. . . love the videos :)
Research on Montessori as a curriculum is really tough because it varies a fair amount, even within school accredited by AMS or AMI (although the accredited schools are obv. much more similar than others).

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