Resumen de Assessment of visual and memory components of spatial ability in engineering students who have studied technical drawing
Marta Méndez, Santiago Martín, Natalia Arias, Ramón Rubio-García, Jorge Luis Arias Pérez
Spatial ability is an important skill in different scientific and technological areas with a highly visuo-spatial specialization, such asengineering, architecture or technical education. In fact, spatial skills are embedded in a curriculum that promotes a holisticunderstanding of engineering graphic tools, techniques and processes. Therefore, a great deal of the research relative to engineeringis centred on spatial skills. However, the mechanisms through which engineers may present a better spatial ability are notcompletely understood. We aim to assess whether students who have studied technical drawing in High School and study the firstcourse of engineering present improved spatial performance in distinct cognitive processes involved in mental rotation ability. We compare the spatial ability of engineering students who have studied technical drawing with students of philology whose pre-university studies were not oriented towards engineering. We assess visual and memory components of spatial ability in the twogroups by means of a visual perceptual speed test and two types of short-term memory tasks, one for visual and one for spatialinformation. A mental rotation task was also administered. Although the results show no significant differences betweenEngineering and Philology students in a mental rotation task, a more detailed study revealed that the formers’ visual perceptualspeed and short-term retention of spatial information was significantly better. In conclusion, first-year engineering students, whosepre-university studies include technical drawing, present better visual discrimination and spatial memory than philology students.
