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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Psychology, 2009. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-59).

The intent of this thesis is to explore whether an existing spatial schema assists with learning a similar environment to the existing schema. Spatially experienced and non-experienced participants of Magic Kingdom Park learned a similar park, Disneyland Park, using a virtual environment. Participants learned the virtual environment either passively or actively. Spatially experienced participants outperformed the non-experienced participants on survey and route knowledge assessments, despite of the training method used in the virtual environment. The results suggest that the existing schema for a similar place transfers to the new environment regardless of passive or active training.

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Approximately 75% of children diagnosed with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are significantly language impaired. While many learn a reasonably-sized set of object words, few master the relational terms (verbs and prepositions) that are the architectural centerpiece of the sentence. Though learning relational terms poses difficulty even for typically developing children, these words are differentially harder for children with ASD. This research is the first to ask why. Three studies examine the abilities necessary to learn verbs and prepositions. Studies 1 and 2 ask whether children with ASD have greater problems dissecting events into the foundational units and categories that underlie relational term learning (i.e., the path or where the object moves, and the manner or how the object moves through space) than do typically developing children. Study 3 focuses on tools known to assist in mapping from these basic categories onto words. Are children with ASD able to use information about a speaker's social intent to discover which event components are labeled by a particular word? Finally, this dissertation offers an exploratory correlational analysis designed to assess the joint impact of conceptual abilities and mapping (social understanding) as predictors for relational term learning in the two populations. Thirty-four 3- to 6-year-old children (17 with ASD) participated in the studies. Despite some methodological difficulties with the conceptual tasks, results suggest that the strongest correlate of relational vocabulary size in typical children was conceptual, while the strongest for children with ASD was social understanding. These findings extend prior research by noting the strong relationship between the ability to read social intent and relational term learning. They also suggest that for children with ASD, difficulty understanding the intentions of others is a primary problem that blocks the road to full language competence. / Psychology

We developed and tested a novel measure of non-rigid, ductile spatial skill using knot reasoning. In Study 1, 279 US adults (M = 30.90 SD = 5.47 years; 76% White, 48% women) recruited through Prolific completed a 73-item knot reasoning task. Using Item Response Theory, we tested the reliability of the measure and removed items with low discrimination to yield a final 54-item measure with good reliability (α = .88). In Study 2, 147 US adults (M = 20.65 SD = 2.80 years; 48% White, 56% women) recruited from a public university in the mid-Atlantic completed a battery of existing spatial skills measures, the new knot reasoning measure, a control verbal measure, and a survey of current and childhood spatial activities. We validated the knot reasoning measure: performance on this measure is significantly, positively correlated with existing measures of spatial skill (mental rotation, paper folding, bending). However, we did not find support for a continuum of spatial skills from non-rigid to rigid using a simultaneous regression and a confirmatory factor analytic approach. Finally, we replicated prior work showing a male advantage in mental rotation performance but no gender differences in other spatial skills, though this relationship differed when using a modeling approach that incorporated spatial activities experience. Using a structural equation modeling approach, we found that masculine-stereotyped spatial activities engagement mediated the relationship between gender and mental rotation and knot reasoning task performance, where men who reported fewer spatial activities had higher spatial skills. Current and childhood feminine-stereotyped spatial engagement mediated the relationship between gender and paper folding performance, with women who reported greater spatial activities had higher spatial skills. Finally, we found that spatial skills did not differ among math-intensive STEM, non-math-intensive STEM, and non-STEM majors. / Psychology

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Geography / J. M. Shawn Hutchinson / The theoretical framework of spatial microgenesis as presented by Siegel and White (1975), and updated by Montello (1998) posits that through exposure, humans will create spatial knowledge of places in their minds. This process is thought to be an ongoing one, and will eventually lead to a metrically-scaled ‘map-like’ image in the mind. In Siegel and White’s dominant framework, knowledge of space progresses through the stages of landmark and route, and ends with survey knowledge, whereas in Montello’s continuous framework, metrically-scaled survey knowledge is present from the first exposure. Beyond that primary difference between the two theoretical frameworks, the continuous framework also provides for greater nuance in how the process may occur for different individuals. There is little research directly addressing the differences between the two frameworks, and this dissertation adds support for the continuous framework by testing three of its five tenets. Utilizing a virtual environment as a laboratory, participants were exposed to a novel environment and asked to complete spatial tasks based on knowledge of the layout of said environment. Over the course of three sessions, measures of spatial knowledge were recorded using distance, direction, and sketch map tasks. The results support the first tenet of the continuous framework: metrically-scaled survey-type knowledge was found in all participants beginning with the first session. The concepts of landmark, route, and survey knowledge are still valuable though, as the results clearly showed that they help to describe the way that individuals conceptualize mental representations of space. These conceptualizations may potentially be valuable as a component of a larger spatial ontology for the American public school system. Regarding tenet two, some improvement in error rates was observed over time, but not at a statistically significant rate for all tasks, suggesting that other factors such as the study length and motivating factors may have played a role in performance. Tenet four was also supported, with significant variation in performance between participants with similar levels of exposure to the environment. Overall, this dissertation finds that the continuous framework is largely correct in its descriptions of the process of spatial microgenesis, albeit with some elements that are not fully supported by the data collected. Despite not being a good model of the process, the dominant framework remains valuable for describing how people conceptualize their spatial knowledge of environments.