Literature Overview Spatial Skills: A Focus on Gender and Engineering

Introduction Strong spatial-visualization skills, particularly the ability to visualize in three dimensions, are cognitive skills that are linked to success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Welldeveloped math and verbal skills are recognized as necessary for success in STEM, and the National Science Board (2010) maintains that spatial skills should be added to this list. Unfortunately, significant gender disparities exist on spatial-skills test performance and are most evident in mental rotation, an important skill in engineering.

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