Imagine A Paradise

Every other year, students join my co-instructor and me on a research-oriented field study down to Roatán, Honduras, in collaboration with the Dolphin Communication Project and its director, Dr. Kathleen Dudzinski.

During this field-based research course, students learn about dolphin biology and behavior, the conservation of coral and sea turtles, and the biodiversity of animals and plants found either in the ocean or on land in coordination with the Dolphin Communication Project and the Roatán Institute for Marine Sciences housed and sponsored by Anthony’s Key Resort, Sandy Bay, Roatán, Honduras.

Visualize Field Research

Students participating in this project learn to map the coordinates of dolphins as they move around their habitat while also sampling their behavioral activity using standardized data collection protocols. Students also keep an identification log (written or drawn) of any animal or plant they see during the different data collection activities. And despite the long days that begin at 0530 and end at about 2100, the hardest task for the students is packing their single carry-on luggage for the 8-day trip (baggage fees are expensive these days).

Each of these activities draws upon a different type of visuospatial ability. Packing a bag requires spatial visualization, if one does not want to pack and re-pack a bag repeatedly to ensure all items fit. Realistically drawing animals and plants adjacent to each other and within their space requires spatial perception to reflect the subjects’ relative positions and orientations. Being able to spatially represent a dolphin’s position from a photo (as the student on the left is taking in the photograph above) to an overlaid visual map to identify the latitude and longitude of each dolphin requires mentally rotating information from one orientation to another.

Reflect on Childhood Activities

While spending time on an island paradise, such as Roatán, Honduras, is one way to soothe a restless soul, there are several less expensive options, including coloring, drawing, or origami. These artistic activities have been linked to positive effects in both cognitive and psychological areas. More importantly though, for the purpose of this post, each activity requires spatial abilities like those described above.

A number of studies have shown that specific activities can enhance certain visuospatial abilities, such as playing video games, improve spatial rotation skills, and substantially decrease the sex difference between males and females. However, artistic activities have not been directly compared in their individual influences on visuospatial skills.

Mentally Rotate From Paradise to Tests

A study by Marina Martinčević and Andrea Vranić (pictured below), published in Memory & Cognition by the Psychonomic Society, explored the question of whether or not specific artistic activities directly influence different types of visuospatial skills. To assess this question, 73 university students with no formal artistic training received about three hours of origami training or drawing training over the course of three weeks. The participants were assessed on several different aspects of visuospatial ability including spatial visualization, mental rotation, spatial representation, and visuo-spatial working memory at three points in time: before training, immediately after training, and 6 months later. The researchers also measured the participants’ subjective experience with each randomly assigned target activity. Instead of offering a true control group in which no activity was experienced, coloring was used as a control to the other two artistic activities.

Spatially Represent Differences

The researchers ultimately found no significant effects of artistic training on any of their measures of visuospatial ability at either the immediate post-test or the 6-month follow-up. Origami did not enhance spatial visualization, mental rotation, spatial perception, nor visuo-spatial working memory. Drawing also did not enhance spatial perception or visuospatial working memory. However, when the researchers evaluated the effect sizes (Hedge’s g) of each measure, some interesting trends emerged.

As seen in the figure below, origami (dark grey hatched bars) showed the greatest difference (medium effect) for a spatial visualization test (SBST) and a mental rotation task (MRT) at the post-test comparison to the pre-test. This effect suggests that learning to fold paper in different ways to create an identifiable object may have developed skills needed to visualize what the folds would create while mentally rotating the object as it was being constructed.

Drawing (white bars) showed the greatest difference (medium effect) for the mental rotation task (MRT) and the visuo-spatial working memory test (CORSI). This task may have facilitated the ability to perceive a constructed object from multiple perspectives while trying to remember the steps of the drawing task via working memory. Interestingly, coloring (black bars) had a medium effect for spatial rotation distortions in which memory for the original position had to be compared to a position that had been moved, which was not expected.

At the 6-month follow-up, 37 students showed that some of the training continued to influence performance on the tasks with the origami group showing a larger effect size (grey, hatched bar, a little under 1.0 in figure below) for the spatial visualization task (SBST) than at the immediate post-test (grey, hatched bar, a little under .5 in the figure above). As at the immediate post-test, the other tasks continued to show small effects for both the origami and drawing groups. Once again, though, the coloring group unexpectedly produced both medium and small effects at the 6-month follow-up, suggesting that coloring may have longer-lasting benefits on cognitive visuo-spatial abilities than expected.

Perceptions Matter

To clarify these patterns of responses, the researchers focused on the participants’ perceptions of the training tasks. They found that the participants reported that the origami task was frustrating and anxiety-provoking, especially in contrast to the drawing and coloring groups. Thus, while the origami group showed the greatest changes in performance from pre- to post- or follow-up tests, the expected gains in the mental rotation and spatial perception tasks may not have emerged due to the perceived difficulty of the task.

The researchers concluded that visuospatial training may need to meet an optimal level of cognitive challenge or, in Piagetian terms, the training should be a moderately discrepant event that elicits curiosity and persistence. While three hours of training may seem reasonable for acquiring sufficient experience to facilitate spatial abilities, it appears that practice makes “perfect” and the development of visual representations requires practice with specific skills training like drawing, origami, or even coloring.

Time to Play

So, while I find my favorite coloring book of a dolphin or try my hand at drawing a dolphin or folding a dolphin,you too should take a few minutes to play. Not only will you release a few endorphins while relaxing, you may see an increase in your Tetris game or luggage packing for that next trip you are planning.

Featured Psychonomic Society article

Martinčević, M., & Vranić, A. (2023). Don’t disturb my circles: The effect of fine arts training on visuospatial ability in students. Memory & Cognition, 1-11. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-023-01446-y