More than meets the mind’s eye: vividness of spatial mental imagery as a predictor of stereochemistry performance

Abstract

During early organic chemistry learning, students often rely on imagistic reasoning to solve visuospatial problems. In chemistry education research, such problem solving is commonly assumed to rely on visual mental imagery. Individual differences in visual mental imagery vividness – including aphantasia, the absence of visual mental imagery held by an individual – motivate a broader question: whether visual mental imagery alone captures the imagery-related capacities relevant to spatially demanding problem solving. This study examined how undergraduate students’ self-reported visual mental imagery vividness could be distinguished from a broader spatially oriented dimension of mental imagery, and whether these dimensions were differently associated with introductory stereochemistry performance. 172 first-year chemistry students completed a six-item Foundational Stereochemistry Skills Instrument (FoSSI) alongside a Spatial and Visual Mental Imagery Questionnaire (SAVMIQ) developed for this purpose. The SAVMIQ showed preliminary evidence of discriminating spatial and visual mental imagery vividness, with factor-analytic results supporting a two-factor structure and the subscales showing differing relationships with stereochemistry accuracy. Higher SAVMIQ spatial mental imagery vividness scores were associated with greater accuracy across five of the six FoSSI items, whereas SAVMIQ visual mental imagery vividness scores were negatively associated with accuracy on one enantiomer-identification item. The findings suggest that success in introductory stereochemistry is more closely associated with students’ reported vividness for imagined spatial operations than with their vividness of visual mental imagery. These findings contribute to understandings of imagistic reasoning by suggesting that visual vividness alone may not capture the imagery-related capacities associated with stereochemistry problem solving.

Authors

• Lauren Baade2
• Efpraxia Kartsonaki1
• Hassan Khosravi2
• Gwendolyn Angela Lawrie1