Hacettepe University / TURKIYE

1. INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN DIFFERENT LEVEL MENTAL ROTATION TASKS: AN EYE MOVEMENT STUDY CELDA 2010 Hacettepe University / TURKIYE Sacide Güzin Mazman & Arif Altun

2. Introduction Need for a better understanding of fundamental issues concerning the effectiveness of learning outcomes. The increasingly widespread use of web based learning environments The role of the user as an individual and their characteristics had become the focus. ! Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

3. Introduction • Content and interface designers were cautioned about taking individual differences into account when providing e-learning content to users. • By providing adaptive learning environments, it is intended to address each individual learner with suitable content in order to facilitate their learning. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

4. encode generate retain retrieve transform information and to discriminate well-structured visual images. Spatial Ability Among the individual differences spatial ability(SA) is often cited as being a good predictor of human-computer interaction performance. Including various cognitive processes and skills as to; • Spatial ability is defined as the; • “ability to formulate, to perceive and to manipulate mental images in the mind” (Tartre, 1990). • and • “the cognition of spatial properties of the world like location, size, distance, direction, shape and movement”(Ahmed and Blustein, 2005). Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

5. Spatial Ability • Spatial ability has alsobeen recognized as an important human skill set to evaluate the effectiveness in learning, training, working, and even playing. • In many research, spatial ability is found to have an effect on web navigation mobile learning design, utilizing from visual cues in web based environments(Ahmed and Blustein, 2005; Juvina van and Oostendorp, 2006; Pilgrim, 2007; Li, Ryu and Parsons, 2009) . • When measuring individual differences in spatial ability, researchers choose the mental rotation tasks as one of the most important ones to yield strong between-person differences(Terlecki and Newcombe, 2005; Collins, 2010). Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

6. Mental Rotation Ability • Mental rotation is defined as • “the ability to quickly and accurately rotate two- (2D) or three dimensional (3D) objects in one’s mind and the ability to manipulate complex spatial information through several and sequential stages in order to derive a correct solution” (Shepard and Metzler, 1971; Samsudin and İsmail, 2004). • It is stated as a • “visuospatial process that measures a component of spatial thinking that involves imagining the movement of objects external to our bodies and in which mental images are represented and transformed in a visual buffer“ (Khooshabeh and Hegarty, 2010; Kossyln, Thompson, and Ganis, 2006). Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

7. Mental Rotation Ability • Mental rotation is one of the most important spatial abilities that is used to diagnose individual differences. • In various studies, mental rotation ability is taken as an individual difference and is investigated how it affects the task performances, reaction times, problem solving strategies information manipulation and visual attention. • Mental rotation ability has been found as an significant predictor of success in the ability of human computer interaction. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

8. Eye Movements in the Mental Rotation Process • Eye movement data is increasingly employed in mental rotation research to provide real time cognitive processing measures and information about this process (Just and Carpenter, 1976; De'Sperati, 2003 ). • Eyes provide a window into mental life (Nakatani and Pollatsek, 2004). • Eye movements, as on-line measures of cognitive processes in general, contain amount of information that reaction time lack by continuously track both in space and time the evolution of mental events, especially those with a significant visuo-spatial content (De'Sperati, 2003) . Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

9. Eye Movements in the Mental Rotation Process • Eye movement metrics provide to understand the cognitive processes and to determine individuals’ cognitive profiles as to whether they are poor or good at mental rotation. • These metrics could be extended to infer strategy use and mental rotation success among participants. • However, it is not clear how individuals vary when the task difficulty levels are diverse. • ! Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

10. Purpose of the Study • The purpose of this study to examine whether the cognitive processes differ across different MRA level participants during performing a mental rotation task. • The eye movement metrics included the fixation length, fixation count, and time to first fixation. In addition, completion times are examined across different MRA levels with differing levels of problems. • Research questions: • Is there a significant difference in completion time of tangram problems across different MRA levels? • Do the eye movement metrics differ across different MRA levels during tangram problem solving? • Do the eye movement metrics at the easy level tangram problem differ across different MRA levels? • Do the eye movement metrics at the difficult level tangram problem differ across different MRA levels? Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

11. METHOD Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

12. Study Group • A mental rotation test was administered to 26 freshman undergraduate level students at the Psychological Counseling and Guidance Department at Hacettepe University. • According to the test results, students’ scores ranged between low and medium levels of mental rotation in their ability. Students, then, were grouped in two levels: Low and High Mental Rotation Levels. • The study group consisted of 10 undergraduate students from the Psychological Counseling and Guidance Department. Five students from each mental rotation level ( =8.6 sd= 2.7 for High Level; and =3 sd= 1.58 for Low Level) were invited to participate in the study. • Since gender is reported to be the most influential variable in mental rotation ability all of the participants were selected among females to fix the gender effect. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

13. Easy level Difficult level Data Collection Tools Mental Rotation Test: Paper-pencil Mental Rotation Test, developed originally by Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) and updated by Peters et.al (1995) redrawing figures, was used to measure mental rotation ability. Digital Tangram Problems:Two digital tangram problems with different difficulty levels -easy and difficult- were used. Problem solution field and pieces field are determined as the two different Areas of interest (AOI) and analyses were executed separately for these two fields. Problem solution field Pieces field Pieces field Problem solution field Eye Tracker: Eye movement data was recorded by Tobii T120 Eye tracker, which was integrated within the panels of the monitor. The fixation length, fixation count, and time to first fixation data were obtained from eye tracker. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

14. Data Analysis • In data analysis, a non-parametric test, Mann Whitney U test was executed to observe the differences between participants with high level and low level MRA in terms of their eye movement metrics during the tangram solution process. • The Mann-Whitney U test evaluates whether the medians on a test variable differ significantly between two groups. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

15. FINDINGS Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

16. Completion time across different mental rotation ability groups Man Whitney U Test result of completion time of tangram problems for different MRA groups .028 High level mental rotation ability group solved both of the easy and difficult level tangram problems quicker than low level counterparts. However the difference is found to be significant only for the easy level tangram problem (U=2.00, n1=n2=5, p=.028) but not for the difficult level (U=7.00, n1=n2=5, p=.251). Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

17. Eye movements across different MRA levels during tangram problem solving Mann Whitney U Test Results of Easy Level Tangram Problem .015* 7.80 .016* .016* International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010 Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE

18. Problem solution field Pieces field Pieces field Problem solution field Heatmaps of easy and difficult level tangram problems Analyzing the AOI showed that participants mostly focused on problem solution field and viewed longer this field than pieces field. It has been revealed out that participants heavily focused on and viewed larger fields on figures in the in problem solution fields. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

19. Eye movements across different MRA levels during tangram problem solving Mann Whitney U Test Results of DifficultLevel Tangram Problem Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

20. CONCLUSION • This study explored the differences between different MRA groups in their cognitive processes across different difficulty level mental rotation tasks using digital tangrams. • The initial analyses indicated that participants’ mental rotation scores were found to be between 1 to 13 (out of 24). • This result can be interpreted that the scores ranged from low to medium. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

21. CONCLUSION • Relatively higher level MRA group solved both of the easy and difficult level tangram problems in a shorter time than lower level MRA group. • This finding supports that the participants with low level MRA rotate objects in longer time because their rotation rates are slower and they spend more mental effort at keeping track of their work in more demanding problems. (Just and Carpenter’s 1985). • However, difference in completion time was found to be significant only in easy tangram problem but not in the difficult one. Since the study group had a low mental rotation ability profile, it was not surprising that no significant difference was found for difficult level tangram problem. • We can speculate that studying with a higher level mental rotation ability profile group would reveal out differences in difficult level mental rotation tasks. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

22. CONCLUSION • Eye movements differed only on the problem solution field but not on the pieces field in easy tangram problem. • However, as represented in the heatmap visualization tool, problem solution fields were viewed more heavily and participants took longer time in this field compared to the pieces field in both of the tangram problems. • It can be stated that participants scanned the pieces field only for choosing the appropriate piece and don’t fixate for a long time. On the other side, they mostly perform all the mental activities such as rotating, placing, decision making on the problem solution field and they fixate longer than on the problem solution field. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

23. CONCLUSION • Longer fixation length and more fixation count indicate that participants have more difficulty and complexity during the process and also spend more time and effort on the focused work. In this study fixation count and fixation length were found to being significantly lower in high level MRA group than low level group for easy tangram problem. • Time to first fixation was found significantly lower in low level MRA group. However, time to first fixation provides only insight regarding which AOI or element in a design attracts attention first and it could not be related with MRA or task performance. • Finally, difference was found not to be significant neither in problem solution field nor in pieces field in terms of eye movements for difficult level tangram problem. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

24. SUGGESTIONS • In previous studies, problem solving strategies were determined by eye movement metrics across different difficulty level tasks. Yet, its relation with the mental rotation ability has not been fully investigated. • Therefore, in future studies, how participants at different level MRA groups apply strategies during different level mental rotation tasks could be explored. • This study is designed as a between group study. • In further studies, differences in eye movements, completion time or task performance could be examined in a within group study across different level problems to determine the effects of difficulty levels within groups. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

25. SUGGESTIONS • In further research, eye movements as an indicator of cognitive processes can be investigated in different environments which require mental rotation use such as alternative to digital tangram or • navigational tasks in 3-D environments, • task performance on different designed sites, • information seeking behavior in hypermedia and • direction/location finding on interactive electronic maps • Since spatial ability is an important predictor of task performance and completion time, adaptive learning environments should be designed to compensate for low MRA level learners. Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010

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27. THANK YOU sguzin@hacettepe.edu.tr altunar@hacettepe.edu.tr Mazman, S.G. & Altun, A. Hacettepe University/ TURKIYE International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age CELDA 2010