Date of Award

2026

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Cognitive Science and Human Factors (PhD)

Administrative Home Department

Department of Psychology and Human Factors

Advisor 1

Shane Mueller

Advisor 2

Michelle Jarvie-Eggart

Committee Member 1

Mary Raber

Committee Member 2

Kevin Trewartha

Committee Member 3

Meredith Minear

Abstract

Spatial skills are vital in many STEM disciplines, starting at or prior to university training, and often extending throughout one’s career. The most widely used spatial ability measures (e.g., PSVT: R, MRT) rely on what I refer to as receptive skills: examining an object or design, mentally transforming it, and comparing it to given alternatives. But because work in many STEM disciplines also involves productive spatial skill such as drawing, I hypothesize that a productive measure of spatial skill may predict distinct aspects of spatial ability. This research investigates the relationship between traditional receptive Spatial Visualization (SV) assessments, such as the Revised Purdue Spatial Visualization Test with Rotations (PSVT: R), and a novel productive spatial skill assessment, the Spatial Grid Drawing Assessment (SGDA), a novel digitally scored on-line assessment. Studies 1A and 1B, examined a battery of spatial tests including an early version of the SGDA, as well as receptive measures, visual-spatial memory, planning, and rotation tasks. Results showed there was no strong core spatial skill that correlated with all measures, indicating spatial ability is multi-faceted. Study 2 used Item Response Theory (IRT) with university students to select items for the digital SGDA, comparing it to the Mental Rotation Test, Version A (MRT-A), and identified 9 items of increasing difficulty that appeared to be a coherent measure of productive spatial ability, with good discriminability at below-median ability level, making it suitable as a screening test. Study 3 compared the productive assessment's results to receptive measures (i.e. PSVT: R and MRT) and a course criterion-referenced assessment to determine its validity with first-year engineering students. Results of this study showed that productive and receptive spatial ability predicted overlapping but distinct and roughly equal proportions of variance in the criterion task. I conclude that the SGDA is reliable and valid with engineering students, and its additive value is notable. A valid productive assessment could significantly improve instructional design in STEM education and selection criteria in various real-world fields (e.g., aviation, medicine, manufacturing, and trades).

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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