A comparative study of eighth-grade students' spatial ability in rural and urban schools of Makkah, Saudi Arabia

his study investigated the differences in cognitive spatial abilities between males and females in the urban city of Makkah and the rural village of Aljamoom in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The instruments used were the Space Relations subtest (SR) of the Differential Aptitude Tests and the Maze Tracing Speed Test.;The subjects for this study were 235 eighth grade students selected to form four groups as follows: (a) 58 urban males, (b) 51 rural males, (c) 64 urban females, and (d) 62 rural females.;Both the SR test and the maze test were administered to all groups under investigation along with a demographic data sheet. Stepwise regression analysis revealed that only sex and site--from a list of potential predictors--entered the regression equations as the best predictors for both dependent variables. For the variable SR, 5.36% of the total variance could be explained by site and 4.38% of the total variance could be explained by sex. For the variable Maze 2.51% of the total variance could be explained by site and 9.55 of the total variance could be explained by sex.;Two-way ANOVA for the SR revealed that (a) males scored significantly (p...