Daniel R. Montello - US grants

9318643 GOLLEDGE It is well known that there are significant differences in performance levels for spatial tasks between men and women. Many scientists have argued that this difference in performance is an important factor deterring women from participating more fully in many of the sciences and engineering. However, it is unclear whether this difference in performance is the result of innate sex-related differences in spatial "competence" (i.e. physiological differences) or in gender-related influences, such as experience, training, attitude, and culture. The goal of this project is to seek a better understanding of the relative importance of gender-related and sex-related differences in spatial competence. This project is being undertaken by an interdisciplinary team that provides the breadth necessary to undertake this ambitious research. A carefully chosen sample of 80 persons will be thoroughly studied using a complementary variety of approaches including personal histories, attitude surveys, behavior surveys, psychological tests, and laboratory and field tests of spatial competence and behavior. This combination of research on social/anthropological and human geographic factors, along with standard psychometric test measurements and performance measures on specific tasks, will provide an indication of the roles that socially rooted values, expectations, and pressures play in determining the existence (or lack) of sex-related explanations of variations in spatial abilities and performance. Results of the analysis will contribute significantly to better understanding the factors behind sex and gender differences in spatial ability and to enhancement of theories related to spatial knowledge in general. As such, the findings will have major implications for a broad range of theoretical and practical issues related to gender and sex differences in spatial performance.

9815553
Montello
This award supports the PI, Daniel Montello, co-PI Mary Hegarthy, and a graduate student from the University of California at Santa Barbara as well as co-PI Barbara Tversky and a graduate student from Stanford University in a collaboration with Christian Freksa of the Department of Informatics and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Hamburg, Germany. The research focus is the description and explanation of mental processes and structures underlying behaviors such as navigation, spatial learning, and spatial language. The field of study is interdisciplinary and will involve geographers, psychologists, computer scientists, and linguists. The U.S. and German groups bring complementary capabilities to the enterprise. The German side specializes in formal and computational modeling and the U.S. group, in empirical human-subjects methods and theory. Each side's contribution will enhance the breadth of research of the other side, and will result in interactions between researchers in the several disciplines mentioned.

There is much excitement about the educational potential of interactive computer visualizations. Despite such optimism, however, we know relatively little about how learners interact with 3-D computer visualizations. Initial studies in medical education suggest that rather than augmenting cognition for all learners, 3-D interactive models may actually be disadvantageous to individuals with low spatial abilities.

This project will examine the effects of individual spatial abilities and visualization design factors on students' spatial comprehension, and use those results to improve the effectiveness of 3-D visualizations in medical education. The first objective of the project relates to the spatial abilities that have been shown to be important for developing 3-D mental models of human anatomy. We will explore the correlation between spatial ability and anatomy learning, and examine how this correlation is modulated by use of interactive computer visualizations and by domain knowledge. The second objective is to test the effectiveness of different aspects of computer visualizations (stereoscopic vs. monoscopic displays, active vs. passive control and haptic vs traditional interfaces) for learning anatomy. The third objective is to apply the resulting findings to medical education by developing and testing training programs that use the types of simulations that are shown to be most effective. The studies will use a combination of correlational and experimental methods to explore the relationships between individual differences and anatomy learning, and the effectiveness of different aspects of computer visualizations. Basic studies will initially be conducted with naive undergraduate students and later generalized to medical students.

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).

Everyday spatial behaviors in geographic space are essential activities in a person's life. Researchers have not yet developed instruments that sufficiently examine and evaluate these spatial behaviors, which include, among others, wayfinding, following directions, and learning new environments. Numerous psychometric tests exist that examine spatial abilities at the "table top" scale, but these tests are limited and relatively unsuccessful when trying to explain variations in everyday geographic spatial behavior. This project will develop and evaluate a series of self-assessed Scales for Everyday Environmental Knowledge (SEEK), which are designed to give a baseline indication of personal confidence when undertaking person-environment interactions and which can be used as variables in explanatory schema of human behavior in real-world environments. I n the first phase of this project, the investigators will examine the SEEK scales for internal consistency and reliability. They also will correlate the scales, which consist of statements with which a person strongly agrees or disagrees, with measures of spatial task performance. Considerable research has found that self-report assessment scales generally are positively correlated in particular task environments with measures of spatial knowledge acquired from direct experience. A selection of laboratory and real-world task scenarios will be set up as experimental tasks, and the performance on these tasks will be evaluated using one or more of the SEEK scores. In the second phase of the study, the investigators will use these scales in a longitudinal analysis of a particular disabled group, those suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Decreasing spatial abilities are an early sign of Alzheimer's disease, and this often rapidly progressing condition presents major declines in a person's quality of life. Despite the severity of this situation, few research efforts have investigated how changes in spatial abilities in this population can be assessed and monitored over time. By employing the SEEK scales, researchers hope to develop a simple, low-cost, non-invasive instrument that can complement sophisticated predictive testing methods for Alzheimer?s disease.

This project will address the pressing need for assessment methods of spatial knowledge characteristics and human spatial behavior in geographic spaces. The project will improve the methodology available to researchers who want to gain knowledge about people's existing environmental memory, and predict their environmental spatial behavior in familiar and unfamiliar environments. It also has great potential for practical applications. The SEEK scales will be applicable in various settings where it is beneficial to add the self-assessment of a specific spatial ability to the set of variables that explain certain types of spatial behavior. These settings include research in spatial abilities, aptitude assessments for jobs that require high spatial abilities, such as taxi driver or parcel delivery, and education in the STEM disciplines where research shows a correlation with high spatial abilities.