Do Spatial Skills Affect Performance in Health Professional Schools?

Spatial skills have been shown to be correlated with performance in scientific fields. These skills may be particularly important for high achievement in medical school, where the extrapolation of 2‐dimensional images to 3‐dimensional patients is increasingly important for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment monitoring. Subsets of students, like females, have been shown to score lower on specific tests for spatial skills. In our student sample, females scored significantly lower than males in both spatial skills and anatomy practical exam scores. Our experimental questions included 1) are baseline spatial skills correlated with performance in first year medical/pharmacy school classes, 2) can students who score low in spatial skills improve these skills and class performance with a short, directed schedule of spatial training not related to anatomical study and 3) are improvements in spatial skills correlated with improved performance on assessments in classes in subsequent years. 220 participants took a pre‐test of rotational skills (Peters, et al., 1995) at the beginning of their first year of medical and pharmacy training. Participants who were identified as low scoring spatial rotators were compared with participants who were adept spatial rotators throughout their first year of professional school assessments. No significant correlations were found between spatial skills and the first anatomy exam. A participant sub‐group of the low scorers undertook a well‐defined training program to improve spatial skills. This subgroup scored significantly better on their first anatomy practical than students with similar starting spatial scores but no spatial skills training.