Relation between visio-spatial abilities and academic success: Başkent University faculty of medicine experience

Abstract

Objective: Mental imagery is generally defined as the skill of recalling nonlinguistic information and has very important role in cognitive functions. In this study we aimed to investigate the relation between visio-spatial abilities and the academic success of Baskent University Medical Faculty students in order to gather usable results that can be applied on the education program. Material and Methods: Ability of mental imagery may be improved by appropriate exercises and may be quantified by several tests called in general as visio-spatial ability tests. The best known and well defined test in this category which is "mental rotation test" was applied in this study. A total of 26 students who studied in their 1st and 2nd academic year in two successive years took part in the experiment. Participants were asked to complete mental rotation test as fast as they could. The results were analyzed in terms of correlations between gender, development in mental rotation ability and anatomy examination score. Results: Mental rotation performance of men compared to women was significantly higher in their 1st academic year (181%, p<0,001). However, it was shown that there is a significant increase in the performance of women after a year of education while men perform no increase (45%, p<0,05). Conclusion: The study as a whole has encouraging results in continuing to investigate new methods and applications in medical education curriculum. With this perspective we may suggest courses and/or trainings that may have impacts on improving visio-spatial abilities of medical students.