SPACEDUCATION 2

SPACEDUCATION

Project ID: RTI2018-098523-B-I00

Funding Body: Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Spanish Gobernment)

Host Institution: UNED (Dpto. Psicología Básica I)

Principal Investigator: María José Contreras

Duration: From 01/01/2019 to 31/12/2021

Title: Learning of visuospatial skills to enhancing equal opportunities from educational, evolutionary and gender perspectives

 

Summary: Several international reports have argued that female’s low presence among professional fields related to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) may be due to gender differences in spatial skills. However, it is known that there is disparity in their effect size, that they vary according to the spatial task applied and that they are influenced by different sociocultural variables. Some studies have found no differences between sexes and that these fluctuate according to the evolutionary moment of development in which they are evaluated. They also fluctuate depending on certain variables that can be influenced from a scientific approach in order to reduce social and sex inequalities. Other studies have demonstrated the effect on spatial performance of previous spatial experience or of psychosocial factors such as gender roles, stereotypes and self-confidence. It has been shown that an equitative learning of the most effective strategies is possible and that promoting effective strategies reduces the gap between men and women in accessing higher education in STEM fields, which are those that most develop the economy of a country. Mental Rotation (MR) is highly related to other cognitive processes, such as Intelligence or Working Memory (WM), and benefits can be expected after brief training. The differential outcomes procedure has shown an improvement in discriminative learning and has been piloted successfully to enhance MR across both sexes.

The present project delves into one of the challenges of the Horizon 2020 society: to improve the well-being and quality of life of citizens, considering education and development as transversal objectives. This project focuses on the social relevance and malleability of visuospatial skills, addressing the analysis of developmental and educational factors, strategies used and learning through their training, optimizing the development of each person through a differential reinforcement. The objectives of the project are:

1. To evaluate the previous experience and self-perception of students regarding the different spatial processes used and to analyze their impact on the choice of degrees with different visuo-spatial load.

2. To evaluate sex differences and the strategies used to solve MR tasks and their relationship with students’ choice of different university degrees.

3. To apply a MR training and to analyze sex and strategy differences in learning by manipulating different reinforcement conditions.

4. To explore the relationship between visuospatial ability and motor coordination and their predictive capacity for mathematics performance, analyzing the effect of age and sex in primary education.

 

 

Keywords: Visuospatial skills, gender effects, STEM disciplines, Developmental and educational development, differential reinforcement, Motor coordination, Mathematics