INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN VISUAL SHORT-TERM RECOGNITION MEMORY, AND THEIR INTERRELATIONSHIPS WITH SPATIAL ABILITY AND MATHEMATICAL PROBLEM SOLVING (PROBLEM REPRESENTATION, SPATIAL VISUALIZATION, WORKING MEMORY, STM)
Abstract
The study had two goals: identification and characterization of individual differences in visual short-term recognition memory, and exploration of the nature of relationships among any such individual differences, spatial ability, and mathematical problem solving, especially as reflected in characteristics of problem representation. 29 female and 21 male undergraduate secondary education majors served as subjects. Each subject participated in 3 sessions during which various cognitive performance measures were obtained. In the first session, a test measuring "spatial relations" using 2-dimensional stimuli and a test measuring "spatial visualization" using 3-dimensional stimuli were administered. In the second session, visual STM was assessed by a recognition memory test in which sequences of block patterns at 3 complexity levels were the stimuli to be remembered, and verbal STM was assessed by a digit-span task. In the third session, subjects attempted to solve 7 nonroutine mathematics problems while thinking aloud; characteristics of subjects' problem representations were inferred from protocol analysis of their written work and audio tapes of their verbalizations. Major findings of the study were: (1) Individual differences in visual STM were identified along several dimensions: the degree of item complexity for which recency effects occurred, the number of serial positions over which recency extended, and sex differences, with males more likely than females to exhibit recency. (2) Subjects exhibiting recency on the visual STM test outperformed no-recency subjects on the spatial visualization and digit-span tests, but not on the spatial relations test. (3) Subjects exhibiting visual STM recency were more likely to construct complete problem representations than were no-recency subjects, although individual differences in visual STM were unrelated to correctness of solution of the mathematics problems. (4) High spatial ability subjects constructed accurate and complete problem representations, and expressed these representations via analog external code, more frequently than did low spatial ability subjects. These results were interpreted as supporting a "working memory" conceptualization of the structure of STM.
Degree
Ph.D.
Subject Area
Mathematics education
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