Using eye gaze to reveal cognitive processes and strategies of engineering students when solving spatial rotation and mental cutting tasks

Abstract

Background Spatial problem‐solving is an essential skill for success in many engineering disciplines; thus, understanding the cognitive processes involved could help inform the design of training interventions for students trying to improve this skill. Prior research has yet to investigate the differences in cognitive processes between spatial tasks in problem‐solving to offer learners timely feedback. Purpose/Hypothesis In this study, we investigated how different spatial tasks change the cognitive processes and problem‐solving strategies used by engineering students with low spatial ability. Design/Method Study participants completed mental rotation and mental cutting tasks of high and low difficulty. Eye‐tracking data were collected and categorized as encoding, transformation, and confirmation cognitive processes. The adoption of either a holistic or piecemeal strategy and response accuracy were also measured. Results Mental rotation was found to have a higher number of fixations for each cognitive process than the mental cutting task. The holistic strategy was used in both difficulty levels of the mental cutting task, while the piecemeal strategy was adopted for the mental rotation task at a high difficulty level. Only encoding fixations were significantly correlated with accuracy and most strongly correlated with strategy. Conclusion Encoding is an important cognitive process that could affect subsequent cognitive processes and strategies and could, thus, play an important role in performance. Future development in spatial training should consider how to enhance encoding to aid students with low spatial ability. Educators can utilize gaze metrics and empirical research to provide tailored and timely feedback to learners.

Eye movement characteristics in a mental rotation task presented in virtual reality

“…Four eye movement metrics were used based on prior studies. The percent fixation time, the number of within-object fixations, the number of saccades, and the strategy ratio were used to quantify visual behavior (Khooshabeh and Hegarty, 2010;Khooshabeh et al, 2013;Lavoie et al, 2018;Nazareth et al, 2019;Hsing et al, 2023). Examples of the eye movement metrics (e.g., fixations and saccades) are presented in Figure 2.…”

“…In addition, eye tracking data can be used to characterize different mental rotation strategies. Holistic and piecemeal strategies have been extensively investigated in previous studies on mental rotation ( Khooshabeh et al, 2013 ; Hsing et al, 2023 ). The holistic strategy refers to mentally rotating one of two 3D objects as a whole and encoding the spatial information of the object.…”