Visual imagination and the performance of undergraduate economics students

Abstract

There is known to be substantial variation in the quality of individuals’ visual imagery, but little is known about the effects of this variation on student learning outcomes. This is of particular concern in subjects such as economics that involve extensive use of graphical or pictorial representations. We present the results of a study comparing the quality of visual imagery with undergraduate examination performance. The quality of visual imagery was significantly associated with overall examination performance, but this result was driven entirely by the associations for male participants. Among males, the association was significantly larger for graphical questions than for mathematical questions, and a high mathematical question grade was associated with a significantly smaller association between the quality of visual imagery and the graphical question grade. Poor visual imagery can impair performance in undergraduate economics, at least among male students.