The relation between childhood spatial activities and spatial abilities in adulthood

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Abstract

This study investigated the relation between childhood spatial activities and cognitive gender differences in adults through the validation of the Childhood Activities Questionnaire developed by Cherney and Voyer (2010). A sample of 403 (133 males, 270 females) undergraduates in Introductory Psychology courses at University of New Brunswick, NB, Canada and Creighton University, NE, USA completed verbal and spatial tests and recalled their involvement in childhood activities. Convergent and divergent validity were assessed by correlating spatial and masculine scales of the Activities Questionnaire with spatial and verbal measures. Spatial and masculine activities were correlated in the predicted direction with performance in spatial measures. Childhood spatial activities were a significant predictor of adult performance on the Water Level Test and math grades over and above the influence of gender. Results confirm the value of the Activities Questionnaire, and importance of childhood activities in promoting spatial skills in adulthood.

Highlights

► We examined the relationship between childhood activities and adult cognitive performance. ► We validated the Childhood Activities Questionnaire. ► Spatial and masculine activities participation correlated with spatial performance. ► Gender had a significant effect on spatial and masculine activities participation. ► Activities predicted spatial scores and math grades over and above gender effects.

Section snippets

Gender, childhood activities, and spatial abilities

Sarama and Clements (2009) noted that an interaction between inborn capabilities and environmental inputs contribute to the development of an individual's spatial abilities. In fact, numerous biological, psychological, and social accounts have been proposed to explain gender differences in spatial ability, including the role of sex hormones (Berenbaum, Korman, & Leveroni, 1995), maturation (Sanders & Soares, 1986), gender-role identity (Signorella & Jamison, 1978), and experience with spatial

Childhood Activities Questionnaires

One issue with previous studies investigating gender differences in childhood activities is their use of questionnaires based primarily on subjective or ranked gender-typed and spatial activities. Previous studies also favored the use of dichotomous categories in classifying activities (i.e., masculine or feminine, spatial or non-spatial). In developing their spatial activities questionnaire, Newcombe et al. (1983) initially used inductive reasoning in order to develop a list of 231 activities

Hypotheses

This study was guided by two hypotheses:

Hypothesis I

It was hypothesized that the pattern of correlations would support the validity of the new questionnaire. Specifically, the finding of positive correlations between masculine and spatial activities participation and measures relevant to spatial abilities (MRT, WLT, average grades in high school math courses) would reflect convergent validity. In addition, it was expected that the correlations between masculine and spatial activities participation, and

Participants

A total of 403 participants were tested at two testing sites: a sample from Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, included 206 participants (70 males, 136 females; mean age = 19.40 years, SD = 2.14), and a sample from the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, included 197 participants (63 males, 134 females; mean age = 19.85 years, SD = 4.01).

Participants from Creighton University were mostly Caucasian (83.0%) or Asian (8.7%). Concerning the setting in which they grew

Preliminary analysis

Considering that the activities questionnaire relies on participants' memory of childhood activities, it would be plausible to argue that these memories would fade with age. Thus, older participants should be excluded, as their memories might not be as accurate as their younger counterparts. In order to determine a cutoff age for such exclusion, the distribution was examined for outliers, with ages three standard deviations below or above the mean defined as outliers. This allowed the

Discussion

The goal of the current study was to demonstrate the relation between childhood spatial activities and adult performance in spatial tasks. This also encompassed the need to establish the criterion-related validity of the Childhood Activities Questionnaire developed by Cherney and Voyer (2010). Face validity was previously established as Cherney and Voyer developed their questionnaire using childhood activities from past measures (Bates and Bentler, 1973, Newcombe et al., 1983, Signorella et

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Etta Brodersen, Susan Voyer, Kaitlyn Fallow, Lisa Plant, Hannah Grawe, Nicole Schmidt, Jack Kostal and Christopher Culhane for their help with data collection and scoring. The work presented here was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Postgraduate Scholarship awarded to R. Doyle, an NSERC Discovery Grant awarded to D. Voyer, and a Creighton Graduate School Grant awarded to I. Cherney.

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