ABSTRACT
In an initial study, Flanagan et al. [11] found that participants who experienced a treatment that involved several diagram-based origami activities were significantly faster on a mental rotation task than the students who had not experienced the treatment (M = 1519 ms and SD = 868 ms versus M = 1783 ms and SD = 993 ms, where M is mean and SD is standard deviation). The standardized coefficients of the regression equation generated from this analysis were as follows: estimated reaction time = (participants×−.115) + (primed× .08) + (treatment× .144). In addition, there are a number of other studies that suggest a significant relationship
between mental rotation like that experienced by students in Flanagan’s study and students’ performance in mathematics [4,13,19]. Hence, the relationship found in the Flanagan et al. study, if understood, might provide some insights into improvement of mathematics performance.
