Studies on Spatial Ability

DOCUMENT RESUME ED 468 852 AUTHOR TITLE PUB DATE NOTE PUB TYPE EDRS PRICE DESCRIPTORS IDENTIFIERS SE 066 790 Seng, Alice Seok Hoon; Tan, Lee Choo Cultural and Gender Differences in Spatial Ability of Young Children. 2002-04-00 9p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Childhood Education International (San Diego, CA, April 3-6, 2002). Reports Research (143) Speeches/Meeting Papers (150) EDRS Price MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. *Cultural Differences; Cognitive Processes; Elementary Education; Foreign Countries; Mathematics Education; Piagetian Theory; Problem Solving; *Sex Differences; *Spatial Ability China; Malaysia; Singapore ABSTRACT This study reports on cultural and gender differences in the spatial abilities of children based on the Water Level Task. The Piagetian theory of age-related developmental differences in performance on the Water Level Task was explored with Chinese and Malay children living in Singapore. Results indicate that children in this study did not perform as well as those described ih the Piagetian developmental stage. There was a significant difference in the performance of Chinese and Malay children with Chinese children performing better than Malay children. At all grade levels, boys had higher proportions of correct scores than girls; however, differences were not statistically significant. (KHR) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ACEI 2002 Annual Conference April 3-6 San Diego, California, USA Cultural and Gender Differences in Spatial Ability of Young Children Alice Seng Seok Hoon & PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Tan Lee Choo National Institute of Education Nanyang Technological University Singapore [email protected] U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research CENTER (EIC) R it,..re._ This document has been reproduced as ceived from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have heen made to improve reproduction quality Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. 1 Studies on Spatial Ability Studies on cultural and sex differences in spatial abilities have been conducted from as early as 1946 when the WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) was used. Most of these were carried out in USA and Europe but very few in Asia. In Singapore, research in gender differences related to spatial abilities is scarce and it was not till the 1980s that spatial ability studies involving mathematics achievement and gender differences in the elementary schools were documented. In 1974, Maccoby and Jack lin published an extensive literature review that clearly established the existence of sex differences in spatial abilities favouring males. Hyde (1981) used meta-analysis to estimate the magnitude of the sex difference reported by Maccoby and Jack lin (1974) and found that sex accounted for only 5% of the variance in the spatial tasks they sampled. However, another meta-analysis done by Linn & Petersen (1985) based on effect size procedure, found that there are three distinct categories of spatial ability tests: spatial perception, mental rotation and spatial visualization. Sex differences were significant only in the first two categories. These meta-analyses suggest that spatial ability is not a unitary concept but is made up of a grouping of several different types of ability. The inconsistent results of sex differences in spatial ability research can be due to the lack of a clear definition of what spatial abilities include. A large variety of tests has been used and several researchers have attempted to identify spatial ability factors but there has been no agreement on the categorization of spatial ability. In 1995, Voyer, Voyer and Bryden performed another meta-analysis covering 50 years of spatial ability research. They found significant gender differences in spatial abilities supporting males on some of the 12 tests that were used. The effect sizes in favor of males vary considerably from test to test, indicating that different measures of spatial ability assess somewhat different processes. This raises questions as to why gender differences do or do not occur. Furthermore, most of the studies that have found gender differences in spatial ability were investigated in Western cultures. Boys have superior scores in spatial ability mainly from these western studies. Not enough is known whether gender differences in spatial skills also exist in non-Western cultures although a few studies have been documented. Mann, Sasanuma, Sakuma and Masaki (1990) found gender 2 and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION BEST COPY AVM _AKe differences in a Mental Rotation Test in high school students in Tokyo, Japan. In Figures Test, 1993 Lee found males performing better than females on the Hidden Card Rotation Test and Paper Folding Test in Taiwan. However, in a study by Pontius (1997) twenty four male and twenty four female schoolchildren (ages 8 to 10) in Northwest Pakistan performed two spatial tasks without showing essential gender differences. Apparently, males in some Asian cultures will be superior in spatial ability depending on the spatial test used. In a 1996 study from Norway by Vederhus & Krekling, it was reported that there were sex differences in 9 year old children on a battery of multiple choice tests representing all three spatial ability categories described by Linn and Petersen (1985) Data was collected from a total of 200 children from a random sample of elementary schools . The tasks included one test for each of the categories : Spatial Perception ( Water Level Test) and Spatial Visualization (Surface Development task) and two tests of Mental Rotation (2D and 3D tasks). Their study showed that boys performed better than girls on all tests. This was significant for the Water Level task. On the other hand, females show superior performance on tasks that require verbal language abilities. In a related study in 1997 by Benjamin, sex differences in visual-spatial performance among Ghanaian and Norwegian adults were examined. This study found that both the patterns and the magnitudes of sex differences on tasks representing three different visualspatial ability categories were remarkably similar among Ghanaian and Norwegian adults and that the intercorrelation patterns between spatial tests were different in the two samples. This finding indicates that culturerelated differences in spatial ability structure may still exist. Given these findings, this study attempts to extend current research understanding about cultural and gender differences in spatial ability of children based on the Water Level Task. Water Level Task The Water-Level Task (WLT) was originally developed by Piaget and Inhelder (1956) to measure a child's ability to perceive space within an Euclidean reference system. In this task the child is required to correctly anticipate the water surface orientation in tilted bottles that are half filled. In the paper and pencil version of the WLT (Li et.al 1999) the child draws a line to represent the water level in several drawings of tilted containers. (Figure 1) According to Piaget and Inhelder (1948/1956), success on the WLT reflects a person's spatial competence that is, the ability to use a Euclidean system of reference to organize spatial experience. On the basis of the findings from their experiments, Piaget and Inhelder expected children to master the WLT by approximately 9 years of age, when concrete operational thought has developed; for some, however, Piaget and Inhelder said that mastery might not come until age 12. According to Li et.al (1999) a number of studies indicate that many American students fail the WLT. Neither boys nor girls performed accurately on the WLT before adolescence and that only boys showed significant age-related improvement from 5th to 12th grade. 3 2 indicated. Thomas and Within age groups, gender differences have also been Turner (1991) found that across age groups, male individuals outperformed female high performers and low individuals, and within each gender group, there were than boys on the WLT performers. At the high school level, girls had lower scores The age at which gender and at the college level, women had lower scores than men. differences begin to appear is also questionable since some studies reported that gender differences appear at all age levels, whereas as early as 1976 Geiringer and 12th grade but not in the 5th grade. Hyde found that gender differences appeared in the It has been noted that Asian students have performed better than American students on spatial tasks like the WLT (Li & Shallcross, 1992; Li etal., 1996). About successful on the 91% of the Chinese men and 76% of the Chinese women were WLT, compared with 56% of the American men and 26% of the American women. In Chinese a later study (Li etal 1999) Chinese college students in China outperformed American men, those who American college students. In addition, among the Chinese write Chinese. could write Chinese performed better than those who could not The Singapore Study Piagetian theory of In the present study, we explored the applicability of the with Chinese and age-related developmental differences in performance on the WLT cultural society, a multi Malay children living in Singapore. Singapore is predominantly Chinese in population followed by the Malays, Indians and Eurasians. elementary school in a The participants were 100 children (aged 8 to 12) from an typical housing estate. The standard paper and pencil WLT was used. It has a total of eight drawings imagine that each of bottles tilted at different degrees. The children were told to under each bottle. They bottle was being held over a tabletop, represented by the line They were to imagine that the bottle was sealed and that it was half filled with water. thought the surface of the water were asked to draw a line representing what they would look like in each bottle. The child's score was the proportion of water lines, which were within 5 degrees of the horizontal. For this task, the split-half reliability estimates have been established to be .91 for males and .92 for females. Results Performance on WLT by Age/Grade (Table 1) mastered the waterMost of the children at primary 2 (typical age 8 years) had not level task. For the eight water-level bottles depicted, the average proportion correct was .42 (ie the mean score per child was .42 out of a possible 1.00) for primary 2 and .63 for primary 3 (see Table 1). Only 30% of the primary 2 children and 23.8% of the answered all primary 3 (9 years) got all eight correct. For primary 4 (10 years) 34.5% the same eight WLT items correctly. The mean proportion correct was .69. This was show that there are for primary 5 (11 years) and primary 6 (12 years). Data seem to two stages of performance on the WLT: all primary 2 and below 8 years and primary 3 , 4,5 and 6 and all above 8 years. 3 Proportion correct on the WLT by Race, Gender and Grade (Table 2 and Table 3) More boys above age 8 have higher proportions of scores correct compared with all the girls .This however is not statistically significant. The Chinese children however do better than all the Malay children and this is statistically significant, F(2,99) = 4.589, p=.012. The interaction between race and gender was not significant. WLT scores for 8 Bottles (Table 4) Three types of scores are given : Zero for wrong response; Half for responses within the 5 degree horizontal and Full for correct 'horizontal' response. Bottle 2, 3, 5 and 6 have more incorrect responses than the other bottles. Discussion The present results indicate that the Piagetian developmental stage of 9 year olds , as reflected in the WLT, does not correspond to the scores of the 9 year old Singapore children tested. Less than half of the 9 year old children had developed the spatial and cognitive abilities required for the WLT. There were more than half who could not solve the WLT at ages 10,11 and 12. This finding is similar to a 1976 study by Geiringer and Hyde who reported that neither boys nor girls perform accurately on the WLT before adolescence. Overall, children in this study did not perform as well as those described in Piaget's reports. At all grade levels, boys perform better on the WLT than girls. There was no statistically significant interaction between grade level and gender. This finding is quite consistent with the meta-analytic studies by Linn and Petersen (1985) and Voyer et al (1995) that male individuals consistently perform better than female individuals on the WLT at all ages. This study provides cross cultural evidence of gender difference in WLT performance from age 8 to 12. It has been pointed out by Linn and Petersen (1985) that males did better than females on spatial tasks due to less effective strategies used by the latter. It was also noted that females tend to take more time, reflect more caution and tend to double check their responses. Females tend to view spatial tasks as more difficult than do males. The better overall test performance of the Chinese children compared to the Malay children may indicate differential experience and socialization from these two racial groups .The poorer performance of the Malay children is probably based on their response to the demand characteristics of the WLT test situation rather than inherent racial or ethnic differences in spatial perception ability. The data in the present study is too insufficient to warrant any definitive statement about the different response patterns from these two racial groups. On the whole the WLT is difficult for children because it requires a number of cognitive and perceptual competencies. It is a multi dimensional problem requiring 4 both knowledge of physical principles and spatial perceptual abilities. Kalichman (1989) reduced the WLT to four subabilities: visual-perceptual skills, mental imagery and rotation skills, use of spatial coordinate systems and recall of relevant information. Graphic and disembedding skills are also required. This probably explain why the WLT seem to be more difficult for children from one culture than another and also for children from within a same culture. In interpreting the present study, caution is advised. There is much diversity between the Chinese and the Malay children. In addition to environmental and social economic factors, there maybe other differences such as home values, practice of ethnic culture, experience with spatial relations and language differences. Also, it is important to keep in mind that current behaviorial and neuroscience research have been examining the processes that give rise to sex differences in the brain from different cultures. Evidence suggest that the effects of sex hormones on brain organisation occur so early in life that from the start, the environment is acting on differently wired brains in girls and boys. Such differences make it almost impossible to evaluate the effects of experience independent of physiological characteristics. REFERENCES: Benjamin, A. (1997). Sex differences in visual-spatial performance among Ghanaian and Norwegian adults. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 28, 81-92. Geiringer, F.R. & Hyde, J. S. (1976). Sex differences on Piaget's water-level task: Spatial ability incognito. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 42 (3,Pt 2), 1323-1328. Hyde, J.S. (1981) . How large are cognitive gender difference? American Psychologist, 36, 892-901. Kalichman, S.C.(1989). The effects of stimulus context on paper-and-pencil spatial task performance. /The Journal of General Psychology, 116, 133-139. Li, C., Nuttall, R., & Zhao, S. (1999). The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 160, 3, 369-380. Li., C., & Shallcross, D. J. (1992) The effect of the assumed boundary in the solving of the nine-dot problem on a sample of Chinese and American students 6-18 years old. The Journal of Creative Behaviour, 26 (1) 53-64. Li, C., Nuttall, R., & Zhao, S. (1996). Gender differences among Chinese undergraduate students in the performance of the water-level task. Paper presented at Asian American Psychological Association Annual Convention, Toronto, Canada. Linn, M.C., & Petersen, A.C. (1985). Emergence and characterization of sex differences in spatial ability: A meta-analysis. Child Development, 56, 1479-1498. Maccoby, E.E., & Jack lin, C.N. (1974). The psychology of sex differences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 5 Piaget, J & Inhelder, B. (1956). The child's conception of space. London: Rout ledge & Kegan Paul. Pontius, A. A. (1997). No gender difference in spatial representation by schoolchildren in northwest Pakistan. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 28, 6, 779-786. Thomas, H., & Turner, G.F.W. (1991). Individual differences and development in waterlevel task performance. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 51, 171194. Vederhus, L., & Krekling, S. (1996). Sex differences in Visual Spatial Ability in 9 year-old children. Intelligence, 23, 33-43. Voyer, D., Voyer, S., & Bryden, M.P. (1995). Magnitude of sex differences in spatial abilities: A meta-analysis and consideration of critical variables. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 250-270. 7 6 Table 1. Scores for the Water-Level Task (WLT) by grade level Grade Pr 2 Pr 3 Pr 4 Pr 5 Pr 6 Age (Years) N WLT score 8 11 9 21 29 .42 .63 .69 .69 .69 10 31 8 11 12 % all correct 30 23.8 34.5 29 25 Table 2. Proportions correct on the WLT, by race, gender and grade Age Race Chinese Malay Others 12 11 10 9 8 Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys .73 .25 .53 .25 0 0 .68 .67 0 .61 .50 0 .73 .60 .75 .85 .57 .75 0 .77 .75 .50 .75 .63 .19 13 0 .75 .75 .88 Table 3. Means of correct scores by sex and race Female N 26 Chinese Malay Others Total 15 3 44 Mean SD N 2.56 1.79 2.65 2.43 31 5.62 4.27 3.00 4.98 23 2 56 Male Mean SD 6.06 2.03 4.91 5.50 5.57 1.88 2.12 2.02 N 57 38 5 Total Mean SD 5.86 2.28 4.66 1.85 4.00 2.55 5.31 100 2.21 Table 4. Water-Level Task (WLT) scores for 8 bottles (B1-B8) Score Zero B1 0 Half One 0 100 B2 49 9 42 B3 B4 51 19 7 0 42 81 B5 54 6 40 B6 48 B7 B8 5 16 4 1 0 94 84 48 i Imagine that each of the bottles you see on the paper is being held over a table top, represented by the line under each bottle. Imagine that the tops of the bottles are sealed and that they are about half-filled with water. 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