Annotated Bibliography

               Baartmans, B. & Sorby, S. (1996). Making connections: Spatial skills and engineering drawings. The Mathematics Teacher. Reston.  This article set out to “demonstrate the kinds of spatial skills needed by engineers for their work and to suggest activities for the geometry classroom that we have used to help build these skills.” It discussed the standard drawing layout, creating orthographic views, inclined surfaces, and activities for the geometry classroom.

            Battista, M., et al. (1998). Students’ spatial structuring of 2-D array of squares. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education. Washington.  This article examined “student’s structuring and enumeration of 2-dimensional rectangle arrays of squares.” They found that many students do not see the row and column structure. They discuss the levels of sophistication in the structuring, and mental processes involved.

            Casey, M. B. (1996). Understanding individual differences in spatial ability within females: A nature/nurture interactions framework. Developmental review, 16, 241-260.  This article documents a study, which discusses spatial strategy differences within and between gender groups. Also discussed is the significance of mental rotation skills for females. This significance is explained through the type of spatial ability in relation to both math SAT scores and math self-confidence. This article provides a basis for the idea of how biological factors may interrelate with environmental factors to produce both within and between gender differences in spatial abilities.

            Ernest, C. H. (1998). Spatial ability and materialization in the haptic modality. Brain and Cognition, 36, 1-20. This article concludes that males with a high spatial ability show a left-hand advantage, while females with high spatial ability show a right-hand advantage. Therefore, this then leads to the idea of left/right brain hemisphere tasks and preferences.

            Fox, E. (1998). Perceptual Grouping and Visual Selective Attention. Perception and Psychophysics, 60, 1004-1021. This study demonstrates that incongruent behavior letters at a constant distance from a target letter produce more response competition and negative priming when they share a target’s color then when they have a different color.

            Hans, S., & Humphreys, G. (1999). Interactions between perceptual organization based on gestalt laws and those based on hierarchical processing. Perception and Psychophysics, 6, 1287-1298. This article describes three studies done to discriminate horizontal and vertical orientations of the groups composed of arrows or triangles regardless of the change of the contrast of the crosses.

            Hans, S. Hymphreys, G. & Chen, L. (1999). Uniform connectedness and classical gestalt principles of perceptual grouping. Perception and Psychophysics, 61, 661-674.

            This study looked at recognition of target letters being more efficient that target letters formed by grouping similar shapes. Their results had a positive correlation with their hypothesis.

            Johnson, S., Flinn, J., & Tyer, Z. (1979). Effect of practice and training in spatial skills on embedded figures scores of males and females. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 48, 975-984.  This article shows that with practice, spatial skills can increase regardless of sex.

           Kozhevnikov, M. & Hegarty, M. (2001). A dissociation between object manipulation spatial ability and spatial orientation ability. Memory and Cognition 29, 745-756. The research from this article found that a person’s ability to mentally manipulate a visual stimulus from a stationary point of view does not reflect his/her ability to reorient him/herself in space. In other words, object manipulation and perspective-taking tests do not appear to reflect the same paradigm.

            Kurylo, D. (1997). Time course of perceptual grouping. Perception and Psychophysics, 59, 142-147.    This study investigated the time course of perceptual grouping based on two qualitatively different spatial relationships: proximity and alignment.

            Li, C. (2000). Instruction effect and developmental levels: A study on water-level task with Chinese children ages 9-17. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 488-498. This article discusses that children do not perform the water level test accurately before reaching adolescence. A 1986 study found that college women who receive training in physics and the Euclidean reference system led to improvement on the water-level task. Also discussed are a few other examples of training methods that are both effective and ineffective in improving spatial abilities of both college males and females.

            Marrara, M., & Moore, C. (2000). Role of perceptual organization while attending in depth. Perception and Psychophysics, 62, 786-799. Experiments were conducted to explore the conditions under which visual attention can be allocated in depth.  

           McCarley, J., & He, Z. (2000). Asymmetry in 3-D perceptual organization: Ground-like surface superior to ceiling-like surface. Perception and Psychophysics, 62, 540-549. This study looked at the ability of participants to group and search implicit planes. They found that the observer’s view is constrained by the ground surface.

            McClurg, P., & Chaille, C. (1987). Computer games: Environments for developing spatial cognition? Journal of Educational Computing Research, 3, 95-111. This article states that spatial skills are improved through computer games involving spatial skills. The increase in scores was not related to sex or age.

            Moser, E., Krobert, K., Moser, M., & Morris, R. (1998). Impaired spatial learning after saturation of long-term potentiation. Science. Washington. This article discussed how learning should be impaired when there is a saturation of the hippocampal long-term potentiation. It explained the theory behind their theory and discussed an experiment done on animals.

            Newcombe, N. Bandura, M., & Taylor, D. (1983). Sex differences in spatial ability and spatial activities. Sex Roles, 9, 377-386. This article discusses how most adolescent activities that include spatial skills are judged to be more masculine. This would lead to the higher spatial skills scores in males.

            Palmer, S. & Nelson, R. (2000). Late influences on perceptual grouping: Illusory figures. Perception & Psychophysics, 62, 1321-1331. This study looked at whether grouping could be strongly influenced by the presence of figures defined by illusory contours. They found that grouping could occur after the participants had perceived the illusory contours.

            Sandberg, H. & Huttenlocher, J. (2001). Advanced spatial skills and advance planning: Components of 6-year-olds’ navigational map use. Journal of Cognition and Development, 2, 51-70. This article discusses the ability of 5 and 6 year-olds to use a map and navigate through their environment. The children use planning and spatial skills to use the map and get through the environment that was created for them.

            Subrahmanyam, K. & Greenfield, P. (1994). Effect of video game practice on spatial skills in girls and boys. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 15, 15-32. This article deals with the experience of boys and girls with video games. Both groups were pre-tested and the experimental group played video games using spatial skills while the control group played games that were word games. The results showed that the practice with spatial skills increases the children’s spatial skills scores on the post-test.

            Watson, S. & Kramer, A. (1999). Object-based visual selective attention and perceptual organization. Perception and Psychophysics, 54, 31-47. This study looked at whether a same-object effect (faster and/or more accurate performance when the target properties appeared on one versus two wrenches) would be observed in different experimental conditions. Their data supported this hypothesis.

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