Collaborative Research: Mechanisms of Visuospatial thinking in STEM

合作研究：STEM 中视觉空间思维的机制

• 批准号: 1661151
• 负责人: Mary Hegarty
• 金额: $ 50.27万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Barbara
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-04-01 至 2021-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1661151&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Mechanisms; Visuospatial; thinking

A team of researchers from Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of California - Santa Barbara will investigate spatial thinking in STEM fields. Students and scientists who are talented in STEM fields also tend to a high capacity for spatial imagination -- they score highly on tasks that ask them to imagine rotations of shapes, or predict how shapes will look when they are folded. But attempts to train these abilities have not translated to substantial improvement in STEM talents. This may be because current training focuses on rote practice, assuming that it is possible to improve the capacity of someone's spatial imagination. In contrast, this may be not possible -- even STEM experts may not have a substantially higher raw capacity for spatial imagination, compared to the average person. The research will test the exciting possibility that their available imagination 'machinery' is similar, but that experts have learned a set of strategies for using that same capacity far more efficiently. The studies will focus on the domain of chemistry, and will ask novices and experts to remember and transform objects that are both unfamiliar (abstract shapes) and familiar (molecules), in experiments designed to unpack the contributions of raw capacity versus a set of predicted strategies. If the studies can isolate the strategies that these STEM experts use to move beyond their capacity limits, then those strategies could be taught in chemistry classrooms. The same principles could extend to other domains as well, such as physics, geoscience, and algebra. This discovery would substantially enhance science and engineering education programs at all levels, strengthening the scientific and engineering research potential of our students. The project is funded by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances the fundamental research literature on STEM learning. Success in STEM is correlated with spatial thinking ability, yet attempts to train spatial ability (e.g., with mental rotation or paper folding tasks) have led to little improvement in STEM outcomes. These spatial training programs may be ineffective because they are based on an impoverished model of the cognitive and visuospatial capacities processes underlying spatial thinking, both generally and in discipline-based education research. The present research will unpack spatial ability into three hypothesized mechanisms, to isolate where training might be best focused, using a set of controlled laboratory tasks that ask novices (undergraduates) and experts to encode and transform both unfamiliar/abstract and molecular stimuli. With chemistry as a case study, this project will unravel the relative contribution of three potential mechanisms for visuospatial representation and transformation: domain-specific chunking (using long-term memory representations of frequently-encountered chunks), domain-general compression skills (recognizing and leveraging redundancies such as repeated identities or planes of symmetry), and raw visuospatial capacity (the ability to store and transform any abstract set of points or shapes). A deeper understanding of the mechanisms involved in spatial thinking would lead directly to better pedagogy and curriculum design for teaching spatial thinking in kindergarten through undergraduate STEM classrooms.

来自西北大学、伊利诺伊大学芝加哥分校和加州大学-圣巴巴拉分校的一个研究小组将研究STEM领域的空间思维。在STEM领域有天赋的学生和科学家也往往具有很高的空间想象能力-他们在要求他们想象形状旋转或预测形状折叠时的外观的任务中得分很高。但培养这些能力的尝试并没有转化为STEM人才的实质性改善。这可能是因为目前的训练集中在死记硬背的练习上，假设有可能提高某人的空间想象力。相比之下，这可能是不可能的-即使是STEM专家也可能没有比普通人更高的空间想象力。这项研究将测试一种令人兴奋的可能性，即他们可用的想象力“机制”是相似的，但专家们已经学会了一套更有效地使用相同能力的策略。这些研究将集中在化学领域，并将要求新手和专家记住和转换既不熟悉（抽象形状）又熟悉（分子）的物体，实验旨在解开原始能力与一组预测策略的贡献。如果这些研究能够分离出这些STEM专家用来超越他们能力极限的策略，那么这些策略就可以在化学课堂上教授。同样的原理也可以扩展到其他领域，如物理学、地球科学和代数。这一发现将大大提高各级科学和工程教育计划，加强我们学生的科学和工程研究潜力。该项目由EHR核心研究（ECR）计划资助，该计划支持推进STEM学习基础研究文献的工作。STEM的成功与空间思维能力相关，但试图训练空间能力（例如，心理旋转或折纸任务）对STEM结果的改善甚微。这些空间训练计划可能是无效的，因为它们是基于一个贫穷的模型的认知和视觉空间能力的过程中潜在的空间思维，一般和基于学科的教育研究。本研究将空间能力解压缩成三个假设的机制，隔离训练可能是最好的重点，使用一组受控的实验室任务，要求新手（本科生）和专家编码和转换不熟悉/抽象和分子刺激。以化学为例，本项目将揭示三种潜在机制对视觉空间表征和转换的相对贡献：领域特定组块（使用经常遇到的组块的长期记忆表征），领域通用压缩技能（识别和利用冗余，如重复的身份或对称平面），和原始视觉空间能力（存储和转换任何抽象点或形状集的能力）。更深入地了解空间思维所涉及的机制将直接导致更好的教学法和课程设计，通过本科STEM教室在幼儿园教授空间思维。

项目成果

Visual ZIP files: Viewers beat capacity limits by compressing redundant features across objects.

可视化 ZIP 文件：查看器通过压缩对象之间的冗余功能来突破容量限制。

• DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000879
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
• 作者: Meyerhoff, Hauke S.;Jardine, Nicole;Stieff, Mike;Hegarty, Mary;Franconeri, Steve
• 通讯作者: Franconeri, Steve

Visual chunking as a strategy for spatial thinking in STEM

• DOI: 10.1186/s41235-020-00217-6
• 发表时间: 2020-04-18
• 期刊: COGNITIVE RESEARCH-PRINCIPLES AND IMPLICATIONS
• 影响因子: 4.1
• 作者: Stieff, Mike;Werner, Stephanie;Hegarty, Mary
• 通讯作者: Hegarty, Mary