Dibujo Analógico
Spatial Learning and Reasoning Skill
People’s everyday activities frequently depend on the skilled performance of spatial tasks in large-scale environments. Such tasks include learning an unfamiliar region through navigation or from a map, estimating distances between locations along a route or as the crow flies, estimating the bearing of an unseen location from a current position, and reading and interpreting a map. Individuals vary widely in their skill at performing these tasks (Farrell & Potash, 1979; Kozlowski & Bryant, 1977; McGee, 1979; Simutus & Barsam, this volume). In our research, we have been investigating the psychological bases of spatial skills. We undertook this research to provide a theoretical foundation for understanding and improving human performance on spatial tasks. We assume that successful performance on spatial tasks depends on both task demands (e.g., requisite knowledge, alternative possible solution paths) and the cognitive resources available to the individual (e.g., memory capacity, solution strategies, ability to perform solution operations). Thus, remediation efforts can focus either on providing the individual with additional cognitive resources (e.g., by teaching effective strategies) or by altering the task to fit existing human capabilities (e.g., by providing additional sources of information).
Procesos y Habilidades en Vizualización Espacial
La Percepcion Visual como elemento importante en las actividades de la vida.
Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual-Spatial Learner
The visual-spatial learner model is based on the newest discoveries in brain research about the different functions of the hemispheres. The left hemisphere is sequential, analytical, and time-oriented. The right hemisphere perceives the whole, synthesizes, and apprehends movement in space. We only have two hemispheres, and we are doing an excellent job teaching one of them. We need only become more aware of how to reach the other, and we will have happier students, learning more effectively.
Effect of visual-spatial ability on learning of spatially-complex surgical skills
Visual-spatial ability is thought to be important in competency in specific surgical procedures. To test this hypothesis, 37surgical residents completed six tests of visual-spatial ability, ranging from low-level to high-level visual processing. Using previously validated and objective instruments, we then assessed their ability to complete and learn a spatially-complex surgical procedure. Residents with higher visual-spatial scores in the form-board test and the mental-rotations test did significantly better in the procedure than did those with lower scores. After practice and feedback, residents with lower scores achieved a comparable level of competency. Our results suggest that visual-spatial ability is related to competency and quality of results in complex surgery, and could potentially be used in resident selection, career counselling, and training.
This study examined, via structural equation modeling, whether children's visual-spatial and executive process skills across 3 to 6 years of age were cognitive precursors to 8-year-old mathematical competence. The extent to which mothers directed their children's behavior at age 2 was examined in the model for its importance as an environmental influence. Full-term (n = 90) and preterm children (n = 160) were seen at 2, 3, 4, 6, and 8 years of age with their mothers to measure children's cognitive and math abilities and observe mothers' directive interactive style. Hypotheses concerning the negative effects of maternal directiveness at age 2, acting as a direct environmental influence on visual-spatial and executive-processing skills and an indirect influence on later math abilities, were supported. In addition, visual-spatial and executive-processing skills were found to have their own specific effects on math abilities. Visual-spatial skills were found to provide an important early foundation for both executive processing, and later, math abilities. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of the parenting environment and interrelations among a core group of basic skills necessary for understanding children's later math competence.
Perceptual learning leads to relatively permanent and often very specific improvements in solving perceptual tasks as a result of preceding experience and training. It seems to involve even rather peripheral parts of the central nervous system, such as the primary sensory cortices.
Spatial Orientation Skill and Mathematical Problem Solving
Study the relationship between spacial orientation skill and mathematical problem solving.
Based on a review of numerous studies conducted on normal, neurosurgical and brain-injured individuals, the right cerebral hemisphere appears to be dominant in the perception and identification of environmental and nonverbal sounds; the analysis of geometric and visual space (e. g., depth perception, visual closure); somesthesis, stereognosis, the maintenance of the body image; the production of dreams during REM sleep; the perception of most aspects of musical stimuli; and the comprehension and expression of prosodic, melodic, visual, facial, and verbal emotion. When the right hemisphere is damaged a variety of cognitive abnormalities may result, including hemiinattention and neglect, prosopagnosia, constructional apraxia, visualperceptual disturbances, and agnosia for environmental, musical, and emotional sounds. Similarly, a myriad of affective abnormalities may occur, including indifference, depression, hysteria, gross social-emotional disinhibition, florid manic excitement, childishness, euphoria, impulsivity, and abnormal sexual behavior. Patients may become delusional, engage in the production of bizzare confabulations and experience a host of somatic disturbances such as pain and body-perceptual distortions. Based on studies of normal and “split-brain” functioning, it also appears that the right hemisphere maintains a highly developed social-emotional mental system and can independentyly perceive, recall and act on certain memories and experiences without the aid or active reflective participation of the left. This leads to situations in which the right and left halves of the brain sometime act in an uncoopertive fashion, which gives rise to inter-manual and intrapsychic conflicts.
Exploring visuospatial thinking in chemistry learning
In this article, we examine the role of visuospatial cognition in chemistry learning. We review three related kinds of literature: correlational studies of spatial abilities and chemistry learning, students' conceptual errors and difficulties understanding visual representations, and visualization tools that have been designed to help overcome these limitations. On the basis of our review, we conclude that visuospatial abilities and more general reasoning skills are relevant to chemistry learning, some of students' conceptual errors in chemistry are due to difficulties in operating on the internal and external visuospatial representations, and some visualization tools have been effective in helping students overcome the kinds of conceptual errors that may arise through difficulties in using visuospatial representations.
Eliminating Gender Differences Through Practice in an Applied Visual Spatial Task
Training strategies to reduce the well-documented (e.g., Lim & Petersen, 1985; Voyer, Voyer, & Bryden, 1995) gender difference in visual spatial ability were investigated. Participants (21 men, 21 women) were trained under 1 of 2 conditions to estimate the orientation angle of a ship viewed on a submarine periscope simulator. The data were analyzed in a 3 by 2 by 2 (Training Conditions by Gender by Test Session) mixed design with repeated measures over the last variable. A significant Training Condition by Gender interaction revealed large performance differences in favor of men in the control group and the group trained using an instruction manual. However, no significant gender difference was found for participants trained with repeated practice accompanied by feedback. This suggests that even a brief training session, using an appropriate instructional strategy, may be all that is required to increase the mental rotation performance of women to the level of men on a specific task. The benefit of the instruction was still evident when tested 3 weeks later; the gender difference was still absent.
Relationship between Visual Motor Integration Skill and Academic Performance in Kindergarten through Third Grade
Conclusion. Performance on a visual analysis and visual motor integration task is significantly related to academic performance in 7-, 8- and 9-year-olds.
Visualization: A Metacognitive Skill in Science and Science Education
The range of terminology used in the field of ‘visualization’ is reviewed and, in the light of evidence that it plays a central role in the conduct of science, it is argued that it should play a correspondingly important role in science education. As all visualization is of, and produces, models, an epistemology and ontology for models as a class of entities is presented. Models can be placed in the public arena by means of a series of ‘modes and sub-modes of representation’. Visualization is central to learning, especially in the sciences, for students have to learn to navigate within and between the modes of representation. It is therefore argued that students -science students’ especially - must become metacognitive in respect of visualization, that they must show what I term ‘metavisual capability’. Without a metavisual capability, students find great difficulty in being able to undertake these demanding tasks. The development of metavisual capability is discussed in both theory and practice. Finally, some approaches to identifying students’ metavisual status are outlined and evaluated. It is concluded that much more research and development is needed in respect of visualization in science education if its importance is to be recognised and its potential realised.
The Role of Spatial Reasoning in Engineering and the Design of Spatial Instruction
Many believe that spatial reasoning and visualization contribute to success in engineering. To investigate this view, we a) studied how students in engineering and engineers in professional practice solved spatial reasoning problems, b) designed and implemented spatial strategy instruction, and c) characterized the impact of spatial instruction on engineering course performance. In the span of 4 years, over 500 students have used our spatial strategy instruction that includes hands-on activities, innovative computer courseware, and problem-solving assessments. We studied 153 students in an introductory engineering course. Overall, students made significant progress in spatial reasoning. In addition, gender differences in the ability to generate orthographic projections on the pre-test disappeared on the post-test. Spatial reasoning ability was a significant predictor of overall course grade, and strong spatial skills were necessary for success on the course exams. Spatial strategy instruction helps students build a repertoire of approaches for engineering problem solving and contributes to confidence in engineering, especially for women. We recommend starting instruction on spatial strategies used by practicing engineers in introductory engineering courses and building on these skills throughout the curriculum.
Las "Leyes de la percepción" o "Leyes de la Gestalt" fueron enunciadas por los psicólogos de la Gestalt (Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler y Kurt Koffka en Alemania a principios del siglo XX) quienes, en un laboratorio de psicología experimental, demostraron que el cerebro humano organiza los elementos percibidos en forma de configuraciones (gestalts) o totalidades; lo hace de la mejor forma posible recurriendo a ciertos principios. Lo percibido deja entonces de ser un conjunto de manchas o de sonidos inconexos para tornarse un todo coherente: es decir: objetos, personas, escenas, palabras, oraciones, etc.