Object-spatial imagery in fine arts, psychology, and engineering

How do students of Fine Arts, Psychology and Engineering visualize objects mentally? To address this basic but important educational question, the students' ability to process figure-ground and spatial imagery was compared using the Object-Spatial Imagery and Verbal Questionnaire (OSIVQ), the Mental Rotation Test (MRT), and the Measure of the Ability to Form Spatial Mental Imagery (MASMI). There were 99 Fine Arts, 92 Psychology, and 90 Engineering second-year university undergraduates. The results revealed that students preferred image to verbal processing, but differences were observed in their preferred style of image processing. Fine Arts and Psychology students were the most inclined to use object image processing while Engineering students preferred spatial processing. Verbal processing was only prominent in Psychology students. In all three academic disciplines, the students' performance in the spatial ability tests is consistent with the features specific of the cognitive style. Overall, men were better at mentally rotating objects than women. We believe that there is a need to design artistic spatial imagery measurement tests to access the students' skills in mental image processing, including image rotation, to identify weaknesses and to develop efficient training strategies in order to correct or attenuate them.