Abstract
Previous studies with adult human participants revealed mixed effects regarding the relation between spatial ability and visual instructions. In this study, we investigated this question in primary young children, and particularly we explored how young children with varying levels of spatial abilities integrate information from both static and dynamic visualizations. Children (M = 6.5 years) were instructed to rate their invested mental effort and reproduce the motor actions presented from static and dynamic 3D visualizations. The results indicated an interaction of spatial ability and type of visualization: high spatial ability children benefited particularly from the animation, while low spatial ability learners did not, confirming therefore the ability-as-enhancer hypothesis. The study suggests that an understanding of children spatial ability is essential to enhance learning from external visualizations.
Highlights
Issues of spatial ability and learning achievement have been an underlying topic of psychological and educational discussions for many years (e.g., Presmeg, 1986; Wanzel et al, 2002; Unal et al, 2009)
Children with high level of spatial ability performed significantly better in the animation condition than in the static condition, while children with low spatial ability achieved the same performance regardless the experimental condition (Figure 6)
Children with high level of spatial ability reduce their hesitation time in the animation condition compared to the static condition, while children with low spatial ability keep the same hesitation time regardless the type of visualization (Figure 7)
Summary
Issues of spatial ability and learning achievement have been an underlying topic of psychological and educational discussions for many years (e.g., Presmeg, 1986; Wanzel et al, 2002; Unal et al, 2009). Concerning the spatial ability and its influence on learning from static and dynamic visualizations, numerous research has been conducted (e.g., Höffler, 2010; Höffler and Leutner, 2011; Nguyen et al, 2012; Berney et al, 2015; Castro-Alonso et al, 2018; de Koning et al, 2019; Kühl et al, 2018; Castro-Alonso et al, 2019a; Castro-Alonso et al, 2019b). Studies investigating the effect of visualization type and spatial ability on children learning performances are lacking. Two principal research questions oriented this investigation: First, what external visualization will lead to the best understanding of a 3D game sequence in 6-year-old children? It has been known that dynamic visualizations may facilitate learning as the learner can explicitly (and directly) perceive spatiotemporal changes in the depicted system/procedure. In the case of static visualizations, on the other hand, the learners
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