A comparative study of two spatial reasoning tests

Abstract

In this comparative study, about the pupils' stage of cognitive development, 597 pupils in Years 5, 6 and Forms I, II of government and private schools, were tested with the Science Reasoning Task I Spatial Relationships, a group test developed by Chelsea College, UK, to assess their spatial ability. furthermore, 61 randomly chosen pupils from the original sample, were also given the Block Design Test individually. Analysis of results show that boys are significantly better than girls at spatial relationships in both private and government schools. Private school pupils in three year groups have greater spatial ability than state school pupils. Spatial ability also tends to increase as the pupils go from one year group to the next, with male pupils showing higher spatial ability in all cases. Besides, significant differences in favour of private schools, have I resulted between Secondary and Primary boys of both school sectors, but in the case of females, no statistical difference was recorded. These findings are not all applicable to the results obtained from the administration of the Block Design Test as the size of sample was small. The correlation between results from the BAS test and SRI' I was 0.616, while the correlation of these results with Maths and Science were of the order of 0. 3 or lower. Further for SRI' I test, comparison was made between the British and Maltese sample.