UTILITY OF PREDICTING GROUP MEMBERSHIP AND THE ROLE OF SPATIAL VISUALIZATION IN BECOMING AN ENGINEER, PHYSICAL SCIENTIST, OR ARTIST

This article has two themes: First, we explicate how the prediction of group membership can augment test validation designs restricted to pr ediction of individual differences in criterion performance. Second, w e illustrate the utility of this methodology by documenting the import ance of spatial visualization for becoming an engineer, physical scien tist, or artist. This involved various longitudinal analyses on a samp le of 400,000 high school students tracked after 11 years following th eir high school graduation. The predictive validities of Spatial-Math and Verbal-Math ability composites were established by successfully di fferentiating a variety of educational and occupational groups. One im plication of our findings is that physical science and engineering dis ciplines appear to be losing many talented persons by restricting asse ssment to conventional mathematical and verbal abilities, such as thos e of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the Graduate Record Examin ation (GRE).