Elyssa A Geer, Connie Barroso, Rachel A Conlon, Jamie M Dasher, Colleen M Ganley
{"title":"A meta-analytic review of the relation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills.","authors":"Elyssa A Geer, Connie Barroso, Rachel A Conlon, Jamie M Dasher, Colleen M Ganley","doi":"10.1037/bul0000420","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Spatial skills are key predictors of achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, despite being acquired through everyday life and not formally taught in schools. Spatial skills include a diverse group of abilities broadly related to reasoning about properties of space such as distance and direction. Recently, more research has investigated the link between spatial skills and spatial anxiety, defined as a fear or apprehension felt when engaged in spatial thinking. There has yet to be a meta-analytic review summarizing these findings. Thus, the goal of this preregistered meta-analytic review is to provide an estimate of the size of the relation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills while considering several moderators (grade/age group, sex, spatial skills measure/subtype, spatial anxiety measure/subtype, geographical region of sample, publication type/year, and risk of bias). Analyzing 283 effect sizes accumulated from research conducted between 1994 and 2020, we found a small, negative, and statistically significant (<i>r</i> = -.14) correlation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills. Results showed that effect sizes including mental manipulation anxiety, scalar comparison anxiety, and navigation skill were often significantly stronger than effect sizes including measures of other subtypes. The magnitude of the relation was not significantly different in children and adults, though effect sizes tended to be weaker for younger samples (<i>r</i> = -.08). Our results are consistent with previous findings of a significant relation between spatial anxiety and skills, and this work bridges a gap in the existing research, lending support to future research efforts investigating spatial cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":20854,"journal":{"name":"Psychological bulletin","volume":" ","pages":"464-486"},"PeriodicalIF":17.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Psychological bulletin","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000420","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/2/8 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Spatial skills are key predictors of achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines, despite being acquired through everyday life and not formally taught in schools. Spatial skills include a diverse group of abilities broadly related to reasoning about properties of space such as distance and direction. Recently, more research has investigated the link between spatial skills and spatial anxiety, defined as a fear or apprehension felt when engaged in spatial thinking. There has yet to be a meta-analytic review summarizing these findings. Thus, the goal of this preregistered meta-analytic review is to provide an estimate of the size of the relation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills while considering several moderators (grade/age group, sex, spatial skills measure/subtype, spatial anxiety measure/subtype, geographical region of sample, publication type/year, and risk of bias). Analyzing 283 effect sizes accumulated from research conducted between 1994 and 2020, we found a small, negative, and statistically significant (r = -.14) correlation between spatial anxiety and spatial skills. Results showed that effect sizes including mental manipulation anxiety, scalar comparison anxiety, and navigation skill were often significantly stronger than effect sizes including measures of other subtypes. The magnitude of the relation was not significantly different in children and adults, though effect sizes tended to be weaker for younger samples (r = -.08). Our results are consistent with previous findings of a significant relation between spatial anxiety and skills, and this work bridges a gap in the existing research, lending support to future research efforts investigating spatial cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
期刊介绍:
Psychological Bulletin publishes syntheses of research in scientific psychology. Research syntheses seek to summarize past research by drawing overall conclusions from many separate investigations that address related or identical hypotheses.
A research synthesis typically presents the authors' assessments:
-of the state of knowledge concerning the relations of interest;
-of critical assessments of the strengths and weaknesses in past research;
-of important issues that research has left unresolved, thereby directing future research so it can yield a maximum amount of new information.