Applying functional near-infrared spectroscopy and eye-tracking in a naturalistic educational environment to investigate physiological aspects that underlie the cognitive effort of children during mental rotation tests

Spatial cognition is related to academic achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domains. Neuroimaging studies suggest that brain regions’ activation might be related to the general cognitive effort while solving mental rotation tasks (MRT). In this study, we evaluate the mental effort of children performing MRT tasks by measuring brain activation and pupil dilation. We use functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) concurrently to collect brain hemodynamic responses from children’s prefrontal cortex (PFC) and an Eye-tracking system to measure pupil dilation during MRT. Thirty-two healthy students aged 9–11 participated in this experiment. Behavioral measurements such as task performance on geometry problem-solving tests and MRT scores were also collected. The results were significant positive correlations between the children’s MRT and geometry problem-solving test scores. There are also significant positive correlations between dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC) hemodynamic signals and visuospatial task performances (MRT and geometry problem-solving scores). Moreover, we found significant activation in the amplitude of deoxy-Hb variation on the dlPFC and that pupil diameter increased during the MRT, suggesting that both physiological responses are related to mental effort processes during the visuospatial task. Our findings indicate that children with more mental effort under the task performed better. The multimodal approach to monitoring students’ mental effort can be of great interest in providing objective feedback on cognitive resource conditions and advancing our comprehension of the neural mechanisms that underlie cognitive effort. Hence, the ability to detect two distinct mental states of rest or activation of children during the MRT could eventually lead to an application for investigating the visuospatial skills of young students using naturalistic educational paradigms.