Evaluation of the Spatial Visualization Ability of Entering Students in a Brazilian Engineering Course

Graphical Engineering and its applications require advanced abili- ties of visualization. The visualization ability and spatial reasoning are essential qualities for engineers due to their importance in the process of graphical commu- nication and these professionals' need for solving spatial geometric problems. Yet, there is still no consensus on the exact components that constitute spatial visu- alization ability. Questions related to increasing students' spatial aptitude have motivated research on evaluation methods, as well as on the existing differences between males and females. Besides gender, differences in the spatial visualization ability and its acquisition have been attributed to a number of variables, includ- ing age, cognitive development, spatial experiences and genetic evolution. This work describes an experiment carried on through the execution of a computerized battery of two spatial visualization tests (Mental Rotation Test - MRT and Test de Visualizacion - TVZ), with the purpose of evaluating the entering students' spatial visualization ability in the Engineering courses of the Escola Politecnica of the University of Sao Paulo and to verify the existing differences between age groups and between genders, as well to analyze the behavior of the performance of the participants in the tests by testing some hypotheses.