visualization skills demonstrate that there are differences in skill levels between students who are potential majors and those who are not, suggesting that students may self-select geology as a major based on their visualization abilities before significant course work. Students in introductory geology courses with very poor spatial skills are more likely to receive poor final course grades th...

This article describes a neuropsychological theory of motor skill learning that is based on the idea that learning grows directly out of motor control processes. Three motor control processes may be tuned to specific tasks, thereby improving performance: selecting spatial targets for movement, sequencing these targets, and transforming them into muscle commands. These processes operate outside ...

This study focuses on three main goals: First, 3-year-olds' spatial assembly skills are probed using interlocking block constructions (N = 102). A detailed scoring scheme provides insight into early spatial processing and offers information beyond a basic accuracy score. Second, the relation of spatial assembly to early mathematical skills was evaluated. Spatial skill independently predicted a ...

We introduce skill chaining, a skill discovery method for reinforcement learning agents in continuous domains. Skill chaining produces chains of skills leading to an end-of-task reward. We demonstrate experimentally that skill chaining is able to create appropriate skills in a challenging continuous domain and that doing so results in performance gains.

Current concerns over reforming engineering education have focused attention on helping students develop skills and an adaptive expertise. Phenomenological guidelines for instruction along these lines can be understood as arising out of an emerging theory of thinking and learning built on results in the neural, cognitive, and behavioral sciences. We outline this framework and consider some of i...

Individual differences in spatial skill emerge prior to kindergarten entry. However, little is known about the early experiences that may contribute to these differences. The current study examined the relation between children's early puzzle play and their spatial skill. Children and parents (n = 53) were observed at home for 90 min every 4 months (6 times) between 2 and 4 years of age (26 to ...

The skill of seasonal precipitation forecasts is assessed worldwide—grid point by grid point—for the 40 year period 1961–2000, considering the ENSEMBLES multimodel hindcast and applying a tercile-based probabilistic approach in terms of the relative operating characteristic skill score (ROCSS). Although predictability varies with region, season, and lead time, results indicate that (1) signific...

In an attempt to explain the superior spatial skill of males, several studies have investigated the hypothesis that spatial ability is enhanced by an Xlinked recessive gene. Some of the evidence based on intrafamilial correlations supports the X-linkage hypothesis of superior male spatial ability (Stafford, 1961 ; Hartlage, 1970; Bock and Kolakowski, 1973; Yen, 1975) while more recent work, inc...

We examined the controlling factors that allow a prompted skill to become autonomous in a discrete-trials implementation of Touchette's (1971) progressively delayed prompting procedure, but our subjects were rats rather than children with disabilities. Our prompted skill was a left-right lever-press sequence guided by two panel lights. We manipulated (a) the effectiveness of the guiding lights ...