| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 數位學習與教育研究所 === 101 === The study explored the factors influencing the elementary graders' performance in the computerized mental rotation test (CMRT) in each grade and in the total aggregate of grades of the subjects.
There were 814 students (430 boys and 384 girls) of elementary grades 4, 5, and 6 from the Metropolitan Taipei. The CMRT was developed for the study, following the construction procedures required for standardized tests. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive timed (6 min.) or untimed treatment, repeatedly took both types of items (mirror type and different structure type), and analyzed with three-factorial (time limit, item type, and gender) mixed experimental design to compare their CMRT performance.
Results showed that, in the total aggregate as well as in each grade of subjects, there were no significant three-way interaction nor two-way interaction, but there were significant main effects found for the three independent variables: The untime subjects outperformed the timed subjects, the score means of different structure items were higher than those of mirror items, and the boys outperformed the girls.
The above findings of main effects were in accordance with major literature. Further analyses uncovered something less found in literature in that there were significant differences caused from different time limits and grades in the scores of item types, and different time limits manifested larger impact on grade 5 children, possibly due to the fact that children's spatial ability experienced larger changes during this stage.
Main conclusions were that, there existed item type differences, gender differences and grade differences in the CMRT performance, and the grade differences were conditioned by the time limit. Future studies can explore the mental rotation performance with other item types, ages of subjects, and testing media to discover the conditions of differential performance of mental rotation ability as well as its origin of differences.
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