2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

There is ever-growing research indicating that high spatial ability correlates with student and professional success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses and career fields. A few valid and reliable testing instruments have been developed to measure specific constructs of spatial thinking in sighted populations. However, due to a lack of accessibility, most of these testing instruments are unable to be utilized by blind or low-vision (BLV) populations.

As part of the Spatial Aptitude Test developed by the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB) in 1939, the Mental Cutting Test (MCT) measures both spatial visualization and spatial relational reasoning. In 2018, the MCT was converted into a tactile test, called the Tactile Mental Cutting Test (TMCT), designed to allow for tactile interpretation, instead of visual interpretation, of 3-D objects and their planar cuts. The TMCT allows all persons, including BLV populations, access to a tool that can quantify spatial ability. To increase the TMCT’s utility, the original format of the 25-question TMCT was split into two subtests (A & B), each containing 12 questions. In 2021, the TMCT’s reliability in measuring spatial constructs of rotation, cutting plane, and proportion in BLV populations was found to be good [1]. However, to increase the precision of the results found in our pilot analysis, the research team desired a larger sample size.

This paper presents a continued reliability analysis of the parallel TMCT subtests A & B with the BLV population. Data was collected from BLV participants attending National Federation of the Blind (NFB) conventions, learning centers for the blind, and STEM-oriented NFB summer camps for high school students. For our continued reliability analysis, we calculated the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for each parallel TMCT subtest with a larger sample size. The parallel TMCT subtests continued to show a high reliability as was previously calculated during the pilot analysis in 2021 [1]. These results indicate that the parallel version of the TMCT is a reliable instrument to measure spatial visualization and spatial relational reasoning in the BLV population.