THE EFFECT OF PENTOMINO ON THE SPATIAL ABILITY

An intelligence game, Pentomino, was used to discover whether it can improve students’ spatial ability or not via spatial rotation. \nA 2 (gender: male and female) × 2 (group: experiment group and control group) × 2 (cognitive style: field dependent and field independent) experiment was designed to conduct this research, where gender, group and cognitive styles were all between-subjects variables. After one month training, the data collected from both groups was analysed and then the results were as follows: For the spatial ability, Pentomino had some effects. In particular, the main effect of group was significant. Comparing the mean score of two groups, the performance of spatial rotation of experiment group was higher than that of control group, therefore, Pentomino had positive effect on students’ spatial ability. In addition, the interaction effect of gender × group × cognitive style was marginally significant when analysing the performance of spatial rotation. \nKeywords: Pentomino, cognitive style, groups, gender, spatial mental rotation.