Investigation of 6, 7 and 8 grade students' spatial ability

The purpose of this study is to investigate relationship between primary 6, 7 and 8 grade students? spatial abilities and their gender, mathematics achievement, hand preference, early childhood education, childhood lego experiences, relevance to music and density of playing computer games. This study was conducted in İzmir with 1036 6,7 and 8 grade students of 9 primary schools which were determined by the method of stratified sampling. This research is a descriptive study. To collect data two measuring instruments ; MGMP Spatial Ability and Hand Preference tests were utilized. In order to analyze the obtained data, frequencies, mean, t-test, one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Pearson product moment correlation were used. The results indicated that spatial abilities of primary 6, 7 and 8. grade students were low level and coherent relationships between spatial ability and sex, and spatial ability and hand preference couldn?t been found. Generally, there was a significant positive relationship between spatial ability and mathematics achievement; and there was a significant positive relationship between two components of spatial ability, spatial visualization and spatial relations. The students who had early childhood education and the students who had childhood lego experiences more performed in spatial ability test than who had not early childhood education and childhood lego experiences. Additionally, it was observed that when students? relevance to music and frequency of playing computer games increased, their performance in spatial ability test became plentiful.