Children learning language efficiently process single words and activate semantic, phonological, and other features of words during recognition. We investigated lexical recognition in deaf children acquiring American Sign Language (ASL) to determine how perceiving language in the visual-spatial modality affects lexical recognition. Twenty native…

Mental rotation (MR) is the ability to transform a mental representation of an object so as to accurately predict how the object would look from a different angle (Sci 171:701-703, 1971), and it is involved in a number of important cognitive and behavioral activities. In this review we discuss recent studies that have examined MR in infants and…

Previous studies on metacognitive performance have explored children's abilities during primary school (7-11 years) in abstract and mathematical reasoning tasks. However, there have been no studies evaluating the metamemory processes with spatial tasks in primary school children, and even more generally, only a few studies have explored spatial…

Background: Spatial ability is significantly related to performance in engineering education, and problem-solving, an activity that is highly relevant to engineering education, has been linked to spatial ability. Purpose/Hypothesis: This study investigated the following question--To what extent is spatial ability related to problem-solving among…

Angelman syndrome is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder caused by a mutation in the maternal allele of the gene "Ube3a." The primary symptoms of Angelman syndrome are severe cognitive deficits, impaired motor functions, and speech disabilities. Analogous phenotypes have been detected in young adult "Ube3a" mice. Here, we…

Current reforms in geometry seek to challenge prevailing ideas about "what it means to do mathematics" (p. 139) by engaging learners in "the grasping of space" (p. 241). This study takes up this challenge by investigating problematizing activity as an embodied phenomenon among 21 eighth-grade learners who engaged with spatial…

The concept that multisensory observation and drawing can be effective for enhancing anatomy learning is supported by pedagogic research and theory, and theories of drawing. A haptico-visual observation and drawing (HVOD) process has been previously introduced to support understanding of the three-dimensional (3D) spatial form of anatomical…

Drawing on the PARTISPACE research (www.partispace.eu) and particularly on findings from three of eight European cities included in the study, this article brings to the surface the dramatic and theatrical practices underlying the metaphor of performance in order to contribute to a better understanding of youth work and youth participation. It…

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing is conducted every 3 years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; oecd.org) with 15-year-olds across the globe. Students complete a battery of tests in science, reading, and mathematics and complete an attitudinal survey. The goal of the PISA testing is…

Many studies on visuospatial reasoning have drawn upon a psychological perspective. Importantly, some research has shown that spatial capabilities are developed through experiences and others emphasize the value of physical involvement. This article reports on investigations of how ecocultural experiences, that is cultural experiences in the…

Speakers of many languages prefer allocentric frames of reference (FoRs) when talking about small-scale space, using words like "east" or "downhill." Ethnographic work has suggested that this preference is also reflected in how such speakers gesture. Here, we investigate this possibility with a field experiment in Juchitán,…

Visual working memory (VWM) is traditionally assumed to be immune to proactive interference (PI). However, in a recent study (Endress & Potter, 2014), performance in a visual memory task was superior when all items were unique and hence interference from previous trials was impossible, compared to a standard condition in which a limited set of…

Block-building skills at age 3 are related to spatial skills at age 5 and spatial skills in grade school are linked to later success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Though studies have focused on block-building behaviors and design complexity, few have examined these variables in relation to future spatial and…

Mounting evidence suggests that monetary reward induces an incidentally learned selection bias toward highly rewarded features. It remains controversial, however, whether learning of reward regularities has similar effects on spatial attention. Here we ask whether spatial biases toward highly rewarded locations are learned implicitly, or are…

Objects such as snowflakes, castles, and butterflies have become more than just words when explored as a 3D print. The founder's passion for braille led to the creation of the program See3D, which organizes the printing and distribution of 3D printed models for people who are blind. 3D prints such as DNA, cells, animals, constellations,…