Mary Hegarty

Mary Hegarty’s research is on spatial thinking in complex activities such as comprehension, reasoning and problem solving. In research on mechanical reasoning and interpretation of graphics, she uses eye-fixation data to trace the processes involved in understanding visual-spatial displays (diagrams, graphs and maps), and making inferences from these displays. A unique characteristic of her research is that she studies spatial thinking from the perspective of individual differences as well as employing more commonly used experimental methods. In her work on individual differences, she studies large-scale spatial abilities involved in navigation and learning the layout of environments, as well as smaller-scale spatial abilities involved in mental rotation and perspective taking. Her current research projects include understanding the roles of internal and external visualizations in reasoning about diverse topics such as mechanical systems, weather patterns and molecular structure and the use of visualization versus analytic problem solving strategies in scientific problem solving.