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Does training mental rotation transfer to gains in mathematical competence? Assessment of an at-home visuospatial intervention

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Abstract

The current study examined whether the effect of spatial training transfers to the math domain. Sixty-two 6- and 7-year-olds completed an at-home 1-week online training intervention. The spatial-training group received mental rotation training, whereas the active control group received literacy training in a format that matched the spatial training. Results revealed near transfer of mental rotation ability in the spatial-training group. More importantly, there was also far transfer to canonical arithmetic problems, such that children in the spatial-training group performed better on these math problems than children in the control group. Such far transfer could not be attributed to general cognitive improvement, since no improvement was observed for non-symbolic quantity processing, verbal working memory (WM), or language ability following spatial training. Spatial training may have benefitted symbolic arithmetic performance by improving visualization ability, access to the mental number line, and/or increasing the capacity of visuospatial WM.

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Notes

  1. Although the WJ-Calculation test includes more advanced problems such as calculus or algebra, none of the children in our study answered such problems. The questions on the WJ-Calculation test attempted by children in this study only included canonical arithmetic problems.

  2. In the spatial-training group, the first session consisted of only translation problems since these problems have been found to elicit better performance than rotation problems (Levine et al., 1999). Subsequent training sessions contained an equal number of translation and rotation problems. In the control group, the first session consisted of stimulus words that were generally shorter than the other sessions.

  3. Each choice array in the CMTT consists of four shapes such that each could be used to generate four different items (i.e., horizontal rotation; horizontal translation; diagonal rotation; diagonal translation).

  4. All participants completed the first training session because it was part of the first laboratory visit. When excluding the first session, the mean number of completed at-home training sessions was 5.73 (out of 6). There were 10 participants who did not complete all remaining training sessions. Importantly, a comparison between the full sample of children (N = 62) with the reduced sample (N = 52) yielded comparable patterns of performance at post-test.

  5. A portion of the training accuracy data (5.04%) was missing due to a technical problem. These sessions were excluded from the accuracy analysis.

  6. One child was excluded from this analysis because the child only completed sessions 1–4. There were no data on the second half of training for this child.

  7. One child in the spatial-training group did not complete this task and, thus, was excluded from this analysis.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Megan Peterson and Elizabeth Wildman for assistance with data collection.

Funding

This study was partially supported by a Scholarly Inquiry and Research at Emory (SIRE) fellowship from Emory University to Jenna Y. Sung, and a scholar award from the John Merck Fund to Stella F. Lourenco.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Emory University, 36 Eagle Row, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Chi-Ngai Cheung, Jenna Y. Sung & Stella F. Lourenco

  2. Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 4202 E Fowler Ave, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA

    Chi-Ngai Cheung

  3. Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, 30458, USA

    Chi-Ngai Cheung

  4. Department of Psychology, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-2500, USA

    Jenna Y. Sung

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Cheung, CN., Sung, J.Y. & Lourenco, S.F. Does training mental rotation transfer to gains in mathematical competence? Assessment of an at-home visuospatial intervention. Psychological Research 84, 2000–2017 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01202-5

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