TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lennon-Maslin, Michelle
A1  - Quaiser-Pohl, Claudia Michaela
A1  - Ruthsatz, Vera
A1  - Saunders, Mirko
T1  - Under My Skin: Reducing Bias in STEM through New Approaches to Assessment of Spatial Abilities Considering the Role of Emotional Regulation
T2  - Social sciences
N2  - Reducing gender bias in STEM is key to generating more equality and contributing to a more balanced workforce in this field. Spatial ability and its components are cognitive processes crucial to success in STEM education and careers. Significant gender differences have consistently been found in mental rotation (MR), the ability to mentally transform two- and three-dimensional objects. The aim of this pilot study is to examine factors in psychological assessment which may contribute to gender differences in MR performance. Moreover, findings will inform the development of the new approaches to assessment using computer adaptive testing (CAT). (1) Background: The study examines the impact of emotional regulation on MR performance in primary school children whose mean age was 9.28 years old. (2) Methods: Skin conductance was measured to assess the impact of emotional reactivity (ER) on performance during an MR task. (3) Results: Patterns of ER influence response time (RT) on specific items in the task. (4) Conclusions: Identifying the effects of emotional arousal and issues of test construction such as stereotyped stimuli and item difficulty in tests of spatial ability warrants ongoing investigation. It is vital to ensure that these factors do not compromise the accurate measurement of performance and inadvertently contribute to the gender gap in STEM.
KW  - gender stereotypes
KW  - gender gap
KW  - STEM
KW  - spatial abilities
KW  - emotional regulation
KW  - skin conductance
KW  - CAT
Y1  - 2024
UR  - https://uko.opus.hbz-nrw.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/2478
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:kob7-24786
SP  - 1
EP  - 24
ER  -