The effects of mind games on secondary school 7th grade students' spatial abilities and spatial ability self-reports

In this research, it was intended to determine the effects of mind game activities on secondary school seventh grade students' spatial abilities and spatial ability self-reports. The research that was designed according to quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test control group was conducted with two experiment and two control groups. The study group of this research included total of 117 seventh grade students who took and did not take elective mind games course in İMKB Hattat Hamid Aytaç Secondary School located in Diyarbakır city center during 2016-2017 academic year. Experiment-I was used as a group who took mind games course and made mind games activities with concrete materials, experiment-II was a group who took mind games course and made mind games activities in computer environment, control-I was a group who took mind games course and made mind games activities that were recommended by the Ministry of National Education and control-II was a group who did not take the course and did not make any of the mind game activities. In this research, spatial ability was considered as spatial visualization, spatial relations and spatial orientation. Before and after the empirical processes that lasted nine weeks, "Spatial Visualization Test (SVT)", "Spatial Relations Test (SRT)" and "Spatial Orientation Test (SOT)" that were developed by the researcher, and "Spatial Ability Self-Report Scale (SASRS)", which was developed by Turğut (2015b) and was adapted to seventh grade students by the researcher, were used as data collection tools. Descriptive statistics, paired samples t-test and one-way analysis of variance for independent samples were used in data analysis. In the analyses, the size of the difference that was found in cases where meaningful difference was observed was analyzed with effect value. According to findings that were obtained from data analysis; It was found that development in two dimensional spatial visualization skills of students in experiment-II group was higher in meaningful level than the students in experiment-I group, and development in two dimensional spatial visualization skills of students in both experiment-I and experiment-II group was higher in meaningful level than control-I and control-II groups. Moreover, a meaningful difference was not found between developments in three dimensional spatial visualization skills of students in experiment-I and experiment-II, however developments in three dimensional spatial visualization skills of students in the both groups were found higher in meaningful level than students in control-I and control-II groups. Development in three dimensional spatial visualization skills of students in control-I group was higher in meaningful level than control-II group. A meaningful difference was not found between developments in two and three dimensional spatial relations skills of students in experiment-I and experiment-II, however developments in two and three dimensional spatial relations skills of students in the both groups were found higher in meaningful level than students in control-I and control-II groups. A meaningful difference was not found between developments in spatial orientation skills of students in experiment-I, experiment-II, control-I and control-II groups. It was determined that development of object manipulation spatial ability self-reports of students in experiment-I group was higher in meaningful level than experiment-II group, and development of object manipulation spatial ability self-reports of students in both experiment-I and experiment-II group was higher in meaningful level than control-I and control-II groups. A meaningful difference was not found between developments of spatial navigational ability and visual memory self-reports of students in experiment-I, experiment-II, control-I and control-II groups.