Transfer from spatial education to verbal reasoning and prediction of transfer from learning-related neural change.

ABSTRACT: Current debate surrounds the promise of neuroscience for education, including whether learning-related neural changes can predict learning transfer better than traditional performance-based learning assessments. Longstanding debate in philosophy and psychology concerns the proposition that spatial processes underlie seemingly nonspatial/verbal reasoning (mental model theory). If so, education that fosters spatial cognition might improve verbal reasoning. Here, in a quasi-experimental design in real-world STEM classrooms, a curriculum devised to foster spatial cognition yielded transfer to improved verbal reasoning. Further indicating a spatial basis for verbal transfer, students' spatial cognition gains predicted and mediated their reasoning improvement. Longitudinal fMRI detected learning

SUBMITTER: Cortes RA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9365289 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature