Abstract
<p style="text-align:justify">The purpose of this study was to investigate how mental rotation strategies affect the identification of chemical structural formulas. This study conducted event-related potentials (ERPs) experiments. In addition to the data collected in the ERPs, a Chemical Structure Conceptual Questionnaire and interviews were also administered for data collection. Eighteen university students majoring in chemistry were recruited. In the ERP experiments, the participants were required to identify 2D figures, 2D chemical structural formulas, 3D objects and 3D chemical structural formulas. The contours of 2D figures are similar to those of 2D chemical structural formulas, but they contain no content knowledge. Likewise, the contours of 3D objects are similar to 3D chemical structural formulas without content knowledge. The results showed that all students used similar strategies of mental rotation in identifying 2D figures, 3D objects and 3D chemical structural formulas. However, the high-achieving students used different strategies in identifying 2D figures and chemical structural formulas, while the low-achieving students tended to use similar strategies of mental rotation in identifying both 2D figures and chemical structural formulas. The results indicate that some of the difficulties in identifying 2D chemical structural formulas that students encounter are due to their inappropriate strategies of mental rotation.</p>
Highlights
The purpose of this study was to investigate how mental rotation strategies affect the identification of chemical structural formulas
The results indicate that, in identifying geometric figures without content knowledge, the low score group (LSG) students could identify 2D figures as well as the high score group (HSG) students, but the HSG students performed better in identifying 3D objects, implying that the original difficulty for some students in learning chemical structural formulas might be due to their failure to identify 3D objects
This finding implies that the use of mental rotation to identify 2D figures is not the main cause of the differences between the HSG and LSG students in identifying chemical structural formulas
Summary
The purpose of this study was to investigate how mental rotation strategies affect the identification of chemical structural formulas. The results showed that all students used similar strategies of mental rotation in identifying 2D figures, 3D objects and 3D chemical structural formulas. As Larkin, McDermott, Simon and Simon (1980) mentioned in their study, participants who were experts in science reported that they could solve problems and form mental images which included 2D and 3D representations in their field without using mental rotation strategies It seems that, based on the research discussed above, the role of mental rotation in identifying chemical structural formulas is not clear. The research questions were as follows: what are the differences between high- and low-achieving students in their use of mental rotation in identifying 2D and 3D figures, and 2D and 3D chemical structural formulas?. When participants recognize or apply specific cognitive abilities such as memory or mental rotation to respond to stimuli, the corresponding electrical activities in the brain are induced (Liu, Huang, & Chou, 2010; Ho et al, 2012)
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