SPATIAL TRAINING
Our research is focused on developing spatial skills training programs, especially centering our work on mental rotation ability.
We are especially interested in the plasticity of visuospatial abilities and the effect that training could have on the transfer of cognitive benefits to other disciplines where spatial thinking can be a key element, such as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
Furthermore, the effect that these training programs have on performance in other spatial visualization tasks and other cognitive skills, such as intelligence, working memory and math is evaluated.
Taking into account the evolutionary cycle, we have begun to assess children aged three years (kindergarten), seven years (primary education) and fourteen years (secondary education). For each age group, both the training in mental rotation program tasks and the tasks of the pre and post training evaluation battery were adapted to suit their capabilities.
In addition, for the age groups in primary and secondary education, we have addressed the relationship between spatial anxiety and performance in the assessed tasks. Moreover, within these age groups, their experience with videogames was taken into account for their performance in spatial tasks, since this is a variable that has been linked in the experimental literature to the explanation of the mean differences typically found between sexes in the research of visuospatial skills.
Finally, we have also addressed the possible impairment of spatial abilities throughout normal cognitive aging, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), as well as the ability to reduce this deterioration through some visuospatial skills training.