Exploring spatial ability in healthcare students and the relationship to training with virtual and actual objects

Abstract

Spatial ability, which is also called visual-spatial ability, can be defined as cognitive ability to understand and encode two/ three-dimensional objects and mental construction of two-or threedimensional forms by working memory. 1 In some circumstances, it is also defined as mental construction of two-dimensional forms of three-dimensional objects when cross-sectioned. 2 As is in many areas, spatial ability is an important cognitive skill in health sciences and can be subsequently developed. 3 It is important to determine the spatial ability skills of students especially during the first years of healthcare education. 4,5 This skill is necessary for anatomy education, which is the basic building block of healthcare education. 3 Studies reveal that spatial ability is one of the important precursors of success in anatomy knowledge learning. 4,[6][7][8][9][10][11] Many studies found out that students with low spatial ability performed poorly on practical anatomy examinations. 5,6,12,13 It is argued that spatial ability skill plays a role in success not only for anatomy but also for basic skills in health care. 7,14 Studies found out that spatial ability was directly related to physical examinations, 15 surgical procedures, [16][17][18] invasive procedures, 19 medical imaging 20,21 and dentistry skills. 3,19,22

Spatial ability and anatomy learning performance among dental students

“…Previous studies found significant differences among healthcare faculties which may be due to the different anatomy curriculum such as the study duration and depth [31][32][33]. Therefore, future studies should be performed across healthcare faculties which incorporate anatomy in their curricula simultaneously to inform the choice of learning strategies.…”

“…The correlation between anatomy and spatial ability scores in females in the current study may indicate that students with low visual-spatial ability might have difficulties in a gross anatomy course, although the correlations were weak. Therefore, introducing an anatomy module involving 3D mental rotation of anatomical structures, as with the Tooth Cross-Section test used by Hegarty et al [ 7 ] in 2009, or learning with 2D anatomical pictures and 3D anatomical models as suggested by Sezer et al [ 31 ] in 2021 may potentially improve the spatial ability of dental students.…”

“…This study only involved dental students in which the cohort of the subjects exposed to Universitas Padjadjaran as the source higher education institution in this study currently offers a wide range of healthcare education which include anatomy in their curricula such as dental, medical, psychology, nursing, midwifery, and pharmacy. Previous studies found significant differences among healthcare faculties which may be due to the different anatomy curriculum such as the study duration and depth [ 31 - 33 ]. Therefore, future studies should be performed across healthcare faculties which incorporate anatomy in their curricula simultaneously to inform the choice of learning strategies.…”