Automatic Real-Time Hand Tracking Enhances Adolescents' Spatial Skills by Eliminating Haptic Feedback

Spatial skills underlie how humans acquire, represent, organise, manipulate, and navigate their environment, and therefore are fundamental for survival and proper function. Spatial skills involve the integration of sensory-motor information with higher-order cognitive representations. Previous research showed that spatial skills can be improved through training, yet it is unknown what sensory information is better for training. Here, we tested a new application for real-time hand tracking as a manipulator of sensory information that enhances spatial skills in late childhood. To that end, children
$(n = 29$
; ages 14-15) completed a 7-week school training programme (eight 30-minute sessions) to improve their spatial skills. Children were randomly assigned into one of two training regimens: Hapto-Visual (HV; students constructed a physical 2D polydron net from different perspectives of a 3D cube) or Visual-Only (VO; students constructed a digitised version of the 2D polydron net without tactile information). Children's spatial skills were assessed before and after the training programme using established tests (Modified Mental Rotation and Mental Paper-Folding Tasks). We found significant improvement in both groups, with a significantly enhanced performance by the VO group compared to the HV group. Our findings suggest that omitting haptic feedback during spatial training compels reliance on mental representations, thereby bolstering spatial skills more effectively. These findings present a new application for real-time hand-tracking technology in educational settings and demonstrate its cost-effective potential to advance spatial abilities in young students.