Spatial skills may be improved through scientific-based training.

The research published this month in Psychological Bulletin, the journal of the American Psychological Association, is the first comprehensive analysis of credible studies on such interventions.

Improving spatial skills is important because children who do well at spatial tasks such as putting together puzzles are likely to achieve highly in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

David Uttal and fellow researchers at Northwestern University with Nora Newcombe, professor of psychology at Temple and principal investigator of the National Science Foundation's Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, reviewed 217 research studies on educational interventions to improve spatial thinking.

"There are limitations involved with looking at individual studies one by one. What we found when we brought together this large body of literature on training effects and analyzed it was a very powerful message, said Newcombe.

"People of all ages can improve at all types of spatial skills through training, period." Although recent research confirms that spatial abilities uniquely predict STEM achievement, there has been some debate about whether spatial skills can be improved — and whether such improvement lasts or transfers to new tasks.

The new meta-analysis answers all those questions in the affirmative. The researchers found that spatial skills are indeed malleable and that spatial training transfers to other fields.

"Our findings have significant real world implications by showing that training can have an impact on a technological workforce.

With the right training more high school students will be able to consider engineering and other scientific fields as a career option," said Newcombe.

One example of the type of training that can increase spatial abilities is having physics students use three-dimensional representations. Video game playing also increases spatial skills.

"Perhaps the most important finding from this meta-analysis is that several different forms of training can be highly successful," the authors say.

"Our hope is that our findings on how to train spatial skills will ultimately lead to highly effective ways to improve STEM performance," said Uttal, the lead author on the study.

The study looked at gender and age differences in relation to spatial thinking and found that in males and females, adults and children, even a small amount of training can improve spatial reasoning and have long-lasting impact.

Journal reference: Psychological Bulletin website
Provided by Temple University website

Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-spatial-skills.html#jCp

Evidence for the Late MMN as a Neurophysiological Endophenotype for Dyslexia

Dyslexia affects 5–10% of school-aged children and is therefore one of the most common learning disorders.

Research on auditory event related potentials (AERP), particularly the mismatch negativity (MMN) component, has revealed anomalies in individuals with dyslexia to speech stimuli.

Furthermore, candidate genes for this disorder were found through molecular genetic studies.

A current challenge for dyslexia research is to understand the interaction between molecular genetics and brain function, and to promote the identification of relevant endophenotypes for dyslexia.

The present study examines MMN, a neurophysiological correlate of speech perception, and its potential as an endophenotype for dyslexia in three groups of children.

The first group of children was clinically diagnosed with dyslexia, whereas the second group of children was comprised of their siblings who had average reading and spelling skills and were therefore “unaffected” despite having a genetic risk for dyslexia.

The third group consisted of control children who were not related to the other groups and were also unaffected. In total, 225 children were included in the study.

All children showed clear MMN activity to/da/−/ba/contrasts that could be separated into three distinct MMN components.

Whilst the first two MMN components did not differentiate the groups, the late MMN component (300–700 ms) revealed significant group differences.

The mean area of the late MMN was attenuated in both the dyslexic children and their unaffected siblings in comparison to the control children.

This finding is indicative of analogous alterations of neurophysiological processes in children with dyslexia and those with a genetic risk for dyslexia, without a manifestation of the disorder.

The present results therefore further suggest that the late MMN might be a potential endophenotype for dyslexia.

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