Investigates whether background television produces structural interference with aspects of cognitive processing. Finds a significant deleterious effect on a geometric analogies and completion task involving visuo-spatial processing and marginal improvement on a parallel verbal analogy test. Shows that concurrent television exposure had no…

Reports four experiments that examined four-year olds' ability to coordinate orthogonal spatial dimensions. Found that performance was particularly good when two imagined lines of sight were the dimensions to be coordinated. Results support the notion that young children perform better when tasks are set in a meaningful context. (MM)

The generation and recall by students of personally relevant information with techniques that varied in the use of spatial and verbal aspects of node-link maps were studied with 108 college students. Students who used node-link maps became more proficient over time than those who used listing. (SLD)

Traces a student's use of different types of imagery over an extended period of time in order to determine why the student seldom used imagery to solve problems. Concludes that for most of her school life, the student had been able to rely on analytic processing to complete mathematical tasks and could do so quite successfully. (Contains 30…

Six experiments involving a total of 112 college students demonstrate that a robust memory for visual context exists to guide spatial attention. Results show how implicit learning and memory of visual context can guide spatial attention toward task-relevant aspects of a scene. (SLD)

Presents four activities in which students cut out and assemble pieces to create Celtic designs. (ASK)

Presents mathematics activities focusing on explorations in the environment that include visual or geometric components. (ASK)

Investigated whether environmental factors affected the magnitude of gender differences in spatial performance when tasks were susceptible to the influence of such factors. Evaluation of college students indicated that males outperformed females on two spatial tests. Activities preference in childhood affected the magnitude of gender differences…

This study examined recognition memory for items and their location among adults with Down syndrome (n=24), adults with nonspecific mental retardation (n=22), and community volunteers (n=20). No differences in memory for spatial location were found between the two groups with mental retardation, though both groups performed worse than control…

Presents a case study that aimed to obtain information on students' mathematical comprehension levels and on whether students may or may not make use of visualization processes in solving mathematical problems. Discovers students' beliefs about teaching and learning processes in general, and mathematics in particular. (Contains 25 references.)…

Asks whether different scoring systems can explain why many studies have found female failures in performing tasks that were designed to assess concepts of horizontality and verticality. Presents new findings involving 86 men and boys and 84 women and girls through which no significant sex differences were found. Discusses suggestions and…

Investigates the effects of using molecular modeling on students' spatial ability, understanding of new concepts related to geometric and symbolic representations, and perception of the model concept. (Author/CCM)

The future of test construction for certain psychological ability domains that can be analyzed well in a structured manner may lie--at the very least for reasons of test security--in the field of automatic item generation. In this context, a question that has not been explicitly addressed is whether it is possible to embed an item response theory…

Two new measures to assess spatial ability are presented: the mental cutting test "Schnitte" (Fay & Quaiser-Pohl, 1999; English version: Fay, Quaiser-Pohl, & Ronicke, 2003), a test for selecting people with extraordinary spatial abilities, and the Picture Rotation Test (Hinze, 2002; Hinze & Quaiser-Pohl, 2003), a mental rotation test for preschool…

The aim of this article is to show that individuals differ in the way they solve spatial tasks of all kinds, and both research on and measurement of spatial ability could profit from an integration of strategy aspects. We first review evidence for both intra- and inter-individual strategy differences (including gender differences) in 3 domains of…