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EMOTIONAL, COGNITIVE AND SOCIAL FACTORS RELATING TO THE EFFICIENCY OF SOLVING SPATIAL TASKS // Pedagogical Review. 2020. Issue 3 (31). P. 201-207

Psychologists are interested in the study of spatial and general cognitive abilities. Known that they can predict success in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) areas. Nevertheless, a comprehensive study of the influence of various factors on spatial abilities was not held. To examine the factors that can be associated with solving spatial problems, the study was conducted on a Russian-language sample, which included 161 young men and women from different study majors (STEM and non-STEM). Studied factors were emotional, cognitive and social. A feature of the study is that a comprehensive examination of factors was carried out in the study of spatial tasks such as “Mechanical reasoning and spatial relations”, “Paper folding”, “Pattern assembly”, “Shape rotation”. As a result of the regression analysis (with the inclusion of all the studied factors), it turned out that for each spatial problem the presented models were significant. All models have the same percentage of explained variance are approximately 20%. Non-verbal intelligence makes a great contribution to “Mechanical reasoning and spatial relations” and “Shape rotation”, and also for non-verbal intelligence, working memory, and the direction of learning make a great contribution to “Pattern assembly” and “Paper folding”. Emotional and social factors were not significant. Findings will enable a better understanding of what contributes to spatial abilities.

Keywords: spatial abilities, STEM, individual differences, spatial anxiety, working memory, intelligence, gender stereotype