Measuring Spatial Abilities in Children: A Comparison of Mental-Rotation and Perspective-Taking Tasks

Frick, Andrea; Pichelmann, Stefan

doi:10.3390/jintelligence11080165

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The possibility remains, that stereotypes form early and only later exert an influence on spatial skills. Accordingly, to evaluate the relevance of psychosocial explanations of mental rotation performance in children more longitudinal studies with an adequate number of boys and girls in each age group and relevant measurements of social factors like SES or stereotypes and the appropriate mental rotation test for each age group must be conducted ( Frick and Pichelmann, 2023 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender stereotypes in preschoolers’ mental rotation

Ebert,

Jost,

Jansen

2024

Front. Psychol.

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The investigation of gender stereotypes constitutes a relevant approach to understanding the development of spatial ability and sex differences in the domain. This was the first study concerned with the presence of implicit and explicit gender stereotypes about spatial ability, and their potential relation to spatial task performance, in preschool-aged children. Our full sample consisted of 138 4- to 6-year-old kindergarten children. The experimental procedure consisted of three parts. Children completed an implicit association task, a short questionnaire on explicit stereotypes, and a chronometric mental rotation task. Preschool-aged children held explicit gender stereotypes about spatial ability linking it to boys rather than girls. Boys exhibited stronger stereotypes in this regard than girls. We also found evidence for the presence of implicit stereotypes. However, implicit stereotypes were not found in sub-group analyses. No clear relationship between stereotypes and mental rotation performance emerged, but our results suggest that implicit stereotyping affected mental rotation accuracy differently in girls compared with boys. Our main conclusion was that children already hold stereotypic beliefs about spatial ability at preschool age. There did not seem to be a relationship of stereotyping with spatial ability at this age.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender stereotypes in preschoolers’ mental rotation

Ebert,

Jost,

Jansen

2024

Front. Psychol.

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Pathways From Spatial Skills to Mathematics: The Roles of Gender and Fluid Reasoning

Harris,

Resnick,

Logan

et al. 2024

Developmental Science

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There are contentious and persistent gender differences reported in some measures of spatial skills, particularly mental rotation and, to a lesser extent, perspective‐taking, which may have an impact on mathematics success. Furthermore, pathways between spatial skills and mathematics may be mediated by other cognitive factors, such as fluid reasoning. Participants (N = 320, age range 8–12 years) completed measures of mental rotation, perspective‐taking, fluid reasoning, and mathematics. Regression analyses were conducted to assess the mediation effect of fluid reasoning on the relations between mental rotation and perspective‐taking, and mathematics. Moderated mediation was performed to assess the effects of gender and age on these relations. Mental rotation and perspective‐taking both predicted performance in mathematics for the overall sample, and fluid reasoning was found to partially mediate these relations. For mental rotation, gender moderated the mediation model, with mental rotation directly predicting performance in mathematics for males but not females. The mediation model for perspective‐taking and mathematics was not moderated by gender. Although a predictor of performance, age did not moderate any of the reported relations. These findings suggest that gender differences in some spatial skills, such as mental rotation, may extend to the pathways linking the skills to mathematics. Although mental rotation may be predictive of mathematics performance for boys, the same might not be so for girls. Extrinsic spatial skills, such as perspective‐taking, offer new pathways to explore in the growing body of work examining the links between spatial reasoning and mathematics.

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