spatial ability

    

What is spatial ability or spatial intelligence?

Spatial functioning is a mental process which is associated with the brains attempts to interpret certain types of incoming information. This information is basically anything visual - pictures, maps, plans etc. While other types of intelligence (such as mathematical ability) are historically esteemed by society, Spatial ability is probably and silently the most vital aspect of the humans mental capabilities. Without the ability to comprehend and interpret visual information something as apparently straightforward as remembering how to get to the front door of our house (from the living room!) would be beyond us.
Gardners account of spatial intelligence touches upon the ability to convey a sense of the "whole" of a subject, a "gestalt" organisation, different from a logical-mathematical kind of organisation. The ability to impart a non-logical wholeness to form, Gardner suggests, may be a function of the spatial intelligence.
One way of defining spatial intelligence is to attempt spatial tasks:

In the diagram below, which of the four distracters is not the same as the test object ?

Here one must examine the test object and compare it with the four distracting objects in order to identify which is the incorrect representation. The distracters must be rotated in the mind in order to solve this type of problem (an example of a spatial factor two - planar rotation).The viewer is required to create a mental image and manipulate this image in order to perform comparison and arrive at the solution. In relation to this type of question (requiring mental rotation of an object) Roger Shepard, on of the leading researchers in the area of spatial intelligence, has shown that the amount of time taken to solve such problems is directly related to the number of degrees through which one form must be displaced in order for it to coincide with the other.

By now you will have an intuitive grasp of the capabilities that researchers believe are central to spatial functioning. Central to this intelligence are the capabilities to perceive the visual world accurately - encode visual stimuli and to perform transformations and modifications upon one's initial perceptions - mental manipulation. One also needs to be able to recreate aspects of one's visual experience, even in the absence of relevant physical stimuli.

Gardner asserts that spatial intelligence emerges as an amalgam of abilities and that practice in one of these areas stimulates development of skills in related areas. Gaughran agrees with this hypotheses in his sub-factor theory of spatial ability where he divides spatial functioning into five sub-areas of ability which are hierarchy and interrelate.

Thurstone divided spatial ability into three components: the ability to recognise an object when it is seen from different locations, the ability to imagine movement or internal displacement along the parts of a configuration, and the ability to think about spatial relations when the body of the observer is an essential part of the problem.

Piaget's investigations into the development of spatial skills in children led to his theories relating to it's division into the ability to retain configurations and the ability to transform these configurations.

There exits volumes of text, research and data on the whole area of human intelligence, all acknowledge the individuality and varied structure of this aspect of the human being. There have being claims of the existence of multiple intelligence's, varying from a total of seven to seventy, so it seems our intellectual blueprint is as individual as a fingerprint.