Spatial Thinking in Physics: Longitudinal Impacts of 3-D Spatial Training

Spatial Thinking in Physics: Longitudinal Impacts of 3-D Spatial Training David I. Miller (David.Miller@berkeley.edu) Graduate School of Education, University of California – Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA Diane F. Halpern (Diane.Halpern@cmc.edu) Department of Psychology, Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA 91711 USA Abstract In previous research, we found that twelve hours of 3-D spatial training, compared to a randomized control condition, improved the spatial skills and physics exam scores of gifted science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) undergraduates (n = 55) directly after training. This paper reports on longitudinal findings of this training study. After eight months, training differences did not exist for spatial skills, physics grades, or physics self-efficacy. Large gender differences, favoring males, existed for some spatial skills, physics self-efficacy, and physics grades. Correlational analyses found that mental rotation performance, not spatial working memory, predicted physics self-efficacy and some physics learning outcomes. These results suggest that sustained exposure to spatially enriching activities over several semesters or years may be necessary to address concerning gender gaps in spatial skills among those most likely to pursue advanced educational and occupational positions in physics. Keywords: spatial thinking; physics problem-solving; skill acquisition; individual differences Introduction Although frequently neglected in traditional education, 3-D spatial skills are critical to success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields (Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009) especially physics (Hake, 2002; Kozhevnikov, Motes, & Hegarty, 2007). Based on decades of evidence, a recent National Science Board (NSB, 2010) report concluded that individuals skilled in spatial thinking are “an untapped pool of talent critical for our highly technological society” (p. 20). Men consistently outperform women on many spatial tasks especially mental rotation (Silverman, Choi, & Peters, 2007; Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995); these results present alarming concerns to STEM educators and policy makers who aim to increase the proportion of women in STEM fields (Halpern et al., 2007). Fortunately, recent research has found that spatial experience such as action video games (Feng, Spence, & Pratt, 2007) and formal spatial coursework (Sorby, 2009) can robustly improve spatial skills. However, most prior research has failed to investigate how long these effects last and how spatial training can improve outcomes for students majoring in STEM fields (Uttal et al., under review). With several self-selected cohorts of undergraduate engineering students, Sorby (2009) found that spatial training was associated with higher engineering retention rates for women and higher grades in future STEM courses including engineering graphics, calculus, and physics. However, Sorby’s studies were mostly quasi-experimental and therefore confounded the effects of self-selection (and hence also motivation, diligence, etc.). Similar differences in GPA and retention rates were found for randomized studies although as Sorby noted, “sample sizes for the randomly selected groups were generally too small to infer statistical significance” (p. 476). Therefore, in Miller and Halpern (2010), we randomly assigned gifted STEM undergraduates from a highly selective science and engineering college to either a training condition that completed twelve hours of spatial training or a control condition. Results indicated that that twelve hours of spatial training (1) improved the skills to mentally rotate and visualize cross-sections of 3-D objects, (2) narrowed gender differences in spatial skills perhaps because of ceiling effects, and (3) improved examination scores in introductory calculus-based Newtonian physics by nearly one-third of a letter grade (d = 0.38) but not for other STEM courses. This paper reports on longitudinal research that investigated (1) whether these training effects are stable across eight months and (2) how to further explain the improvements in physics examination scores. As Uttal et al. (under review) noted, demonstrating stable, durable training effects is critical for designing effective spatial curriculum and educational policies. Out of the 217 research studies reviewed by Uttal et al., only three studies measured spatial performance more than one month after training. These studies are two randomized studies with non-STEM undergraduates (Feng, Spence, & Pratt, 2007; Terlecki, Newcombe, & Little, 2008) and one within- subjects study (with no control condition) with middle school and high school atmospheric science students (Hedley, 2008). These three studies found large, durable training improvements (average d = 0.67) for three to five months after training. Furthermore, these longitudinal studies found little decrement in spatial skills between the immediate and delayed spatial post-tests suggesting these effects could persist for even longer than five months. Perhaps most encouragingly, Terlecki et al. (2008) found durable transfer to untrained spatial tasks (e.g., the stimuli in the transfer test bore little resemblance to the stimuli in the training tasks). These longitudinal results strongly suggest that improvements in spatial skills can be long- lasting up to at least five months, although it remains