This article examines whether questions embedded in geography textbooks address three components of spatial thinking: concepts of space, tools of representation, and processes of reasoning. A three-dimensional taxonomy of spatial thinking was developed and used to evaluate questions in four high school level geography textbooks. The results…

Although research has focused primarily on the wide range of variability in the cognitive phenotype between individuals with velo-cardio-facial syndrome (VCFS), we know relatively little about the extent to which within-individual expressions of the cognitive phenotype remain stable throughout development. General cognitive functioning in the low…

Two experiments examined whether text composition engages verbal, visual, and spatial working memory to different degrees. In Experiment 1, undergraduate students composed by longhand a persuasive text while performing a verbal, visual, or spatial concurrent task that was presented visually. In Experiment 2, participants performed a verbal or…

Many students perform extraction experiments without connecting relevant molecular features to corresponding macroscopic features. Two versions of an Organic Extraction Simulation, one with text "captions" and the other with "narration" accompanying the animation, were developed based on a cognitive view of multimedia learning.…

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic disorder associated with severe visuocognitive impairment. Individuals with WS also report difficulties with everyday wayfinding. To study the development of body-, environment-, and object-based spatial frames of reference in WS, we tested 45 children and adults with WS on a search task in which the participant…

Earlier studies have found that students, including adults, have problems understanding the scientifically accepted model of the Sun-Earth-Moon system and explaining day-to-day astronomical phenomena based on it. We have been examining such problems in the context of recent research on visual-spatial reasoning. Working with middle school students…

This study investigated the use of block-building interventions to develop spatial-reasoning skills in kindergartners. Two intervention conditions and a control condition were included to determine, first, whether the block building activities themselves benefited children's spatial skills, and secondly, whether a story context further improved…

Change blindness, or the failure to detect (often large) changes to visual scenes, has been demonstrated in a variety of different situations. Failures to detect auditory changes are far less studied, and thus little is known about the nature of change deafness. Five experiments were conducted to explore the processes involved in change deafness…

This study examines the relationship of gender and spatial perception on student interactivity with contour maps and non-immersive virtual reality. Eighteen eighth-grade students elected to participate in a six-week activity-based course called "3-D GeoMapping." The course included nine days of activities related to topographic mapping.…

Demonstrates that the tendency toward canonicality is reduced when objects in differing orientation are presented side by side. The number of canonical errors is reduced when the object is opaque. (Author)

Attempts to resolve empirically apparent contradictions regarding the role of landmarks by manipulating directly the salience or "noticeability" of the landmarks available to young children in a spatial memory task. Assesses whether direction traveled at time of recall affects accuracy of young children's memory for spatial location. (RH)

Results indicated that three- and four-year-olds judge area by a height plus width rule. This adding rule was interpreted in terms of a general purpose judgmental strategy that young children employ to make quantitative judgments. (JMB)

Investigated 5-month-olds' perception of an object whose center was occluded and whose ends were visible only in succession. Found that infants perceived the object as one connected whole when the ends underwent common motion but not when the ends were stationary. Results suggest that infants perceive object unity but not object form. (Author/BC)

In three studies, infants reached for objects as distinct units when the objects moved separately or were separated in space. Otherwise, infants reached for objects as one unit. In one study, patterns of dishabituation provided further evidence that separated or separately moving objects were perceived as distinct units. (RH)

Six experiments examined whether there were circumstances in which toddlers could use landmarks for spatial reorientation. Findings confirmed that geometric information is used for reorientation by toddlers, but give reason to doubt that the use of this information is achieved using a module impenetrable to nongeometric information. (Author/KB)