Visual Perceptual Ability and Academic Achievement in Undergraduate Engineering

Cognitive and neurosciences provide new ways to advance the scholarship of learning and teaching. One such application is identification of the cognitive processes that contribute to academic achievement. Intelligence testing has been shown to be of limited use in higher education, and so there is a need to identify other cognitive and neurobehavioral factors that may be important. One possibility, in the context of STEM education, is visuospatial ability, as this has been linked to achievement in several technical, or things-based courses. In the current study, 60 industrial engineering students and 60 social sciences students were assessed on a task of visual size judgement, and the ability of performance to predict grade point average (GPA) scores was estimated. It was found that size judgement was significantly and positively correlated with GPA within the engineering group, but not in the social sciences group. Furthermore, the results could not be explained by demographic factors such as sex or age. It is concluded that visual perceptual ability, specifically size judgement, may be a useful predictor of academic achievement, and may thus help to partly explain why some engineering students excel, and others do not. Furthermore, potential for training of visuospatial skills to enhance attainment in engineering training is discussed.