Improving children's cognitive modifiability by dynamic assessment in 3D Immersive Virtual Reality environments

Increasing evidence reveals the efficacy of dynamic assessment (DA) procedure in
providing rich and reliable feedback regarding children's cognitive modifiability. The DA
procedure included four phases: pre-teaching test, teaching, post-teaching and transfer
test two weeks after teaching. The teaching phase includes mediated learning experience
strategies. Children's cognitive modifiability was examined by pre- to post-teaching
improvement and by the transfer test. Children in Grades 1 and 2 (n ¼ 117) were
randomly assigned into three experimental groups and one control group. Each of the
experimental groups was given the teaching phase in a different modality: 3D Immersive
Virtual Reality (IVR, n ¼ 36), 2D (n ¼ 36), and tangible blocks (TB, n ¼ 24). The control
group (n ¼ 21) was not given teaching phase. The teaching phase included strategies of
solving problems from the Analogies Subtest of the Cognitive Modifiability Battery (CMB).
Pre- and post-teaching CMB Analogies tests were administered to all groups followed by
CMB Transfer Analogies two weeks later. The findings indicate that the 2D and TB groups
showed higher cognitive modifiability than the control group. Also, the findings indicate
that teaching in a 3D IVR environment contributed to the children's cognitive modifiability
more than in the other groups in the CMB Transfer Analogies. The findings are discussed in
relation to the unique enhancing characteristics of the 3D IVR condition combined with
the applied mediation strategies.