Visuospatial working memory in intuitive geometry, and in academic achievement in geometry

A study was conducted on the involvement of visuospatial working memory (VSWM) in intuitive geometry and in school performance in geometry at secondary school. A total of 166 pupils were administered: (1) six VSWM tasks, comprising simple storage and complex span tasks; and (2) the intuitive geometry task devised by Dehaene, Izard, Pica, and Spelke (2006), which distinguishes between core, presumably innate, and culturally-mediated principles of geometry; and (3) a task measuring academic achievement in geometry. Path analysis models showed that some VSWM components support culturally-mediated principles of geometry, whereas no VSWM component is related to the core principles of geometry. A complex VSWM task requiring the manipulation of visual information as well as core and culturally-mediated principles of geometry directly predicted academic achievement in geometry. Our results are discussed in terms of the role of VSWM in learning geometry. (c) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.