Spatial ability: Difference between revisions

Spatial ability or visuo-spatial ability is the capacity to understand, reason and remember the spatial relations among objects or space.^[1] Visual-spatial abilities are highly important for everyday use from navigating on the road, understanding or fixing an equipment, understanding or estimating distance and measurement and performing on a job. Spatial abilities are also highly critical for success in may fields such as sports, technical aptitude, mathematics, natural sciences, engineering, economic forecasting, meteorology, chemistry and physics.^[2][3] Not only do spatial abilities involve understanding the outside world, but they also involve processing outside information and reasoning it through mental and visual imagery in the mind.

Spatial ability or visuo-spatial ability is the capacity to understand, reason and remember the spatial relations among objects or space.^[1] There are three main types of spatial abilities which include spatial or visuo-spatial perception, spatial visualization and mental rotation.^[4] Each of these abilities have unique properties and importance to many types of tasks whether in certain jobs or everyday life. For example, spatial perception is defined as the ability to perceive and be aware of spatial relations or attributes despite distracting information. Spatial visualization on the other hand is ability to manipulate complex spatial information through mental imagery when several stages are needed to find the correct solution in a problem. Lastly, mental rotation is the mental ability to manipulate and rotate 2D or 3D objects and space quickly and accurately.^[4] These three abilities are mediated and supported by a fourth spatial cognitive factor known as spatial working memory. Spatial working memory is the ability to temporarily store and record a certain amount of visual and spatial information in order to complete a task. This cognitive ability mediates individual differences in the capacity for higher level spatial abilities such as mental rotation.

Spatial perception is defined as the ability to perceive and be aware of spatial relations or attributes despite distracting information.^[4] It consist of able to perceive and visually understand outside spatial information such as features, properties, measurement, shapes, position and motion.^[5] For example, when one is navigating through a dense forest they are using his or her spatial perception and awareness. Or another example is when trying to understand the relations and mechanics inside of a car, he or she is relying on their spatial perception to understand it's visual framework. Spatial perception is also highly relevant in sports. For example, a study found that cricket players who were faster at picking up information from briefly presented visual displays were significantly better batsmen in an actual game.^[6] A 2015 study published in the Journal of Vision found that soccer players had higher perceptual ability for body kinematics such as processing multitasking crowd scenes which involve pedestrians crossing a street or complex dynamic visual scenes.^[7] Another study published in the Journal of Human Kinetics on fencing athletes found that achievement level was highly correlated with spatial perceptual skills such as visual discrimination, visual-spatial relationships, visual sequential memory, narrow attentional focus and visual information processing.^[8] A review published in the journal of Neuropsychologia found that spatial perception involve attributing meaning to an object or space so that their sensory processing is actually part of semantic processing of the incoming visual information.^[9] The review also found that spatial perception involve the human visual system in the brain and the parietal lobule which is responsible for visuomotor processing and visually goal-directed action.^[9] Studies have also found that individuals who played first person shooting games had better spatial perceptual skills like faster and more accurate performance in a peripheral and identification task while simultaneously performing a central search.^[10] Researchers suggested that addition to enhancing the ability to divide attention, playing action games significantly enhances perceptual skills like top-down guidance of attention to possible target locations.^[11]

Spatial visualization is ability to imagine and manipulate complex visuo-spatial information through mental imagery when several stages are needed to find the correct solution in a problem. It consists of visual imagery which is the ability to mentally represent visual appearances of an object, and spatial imagery which consists of mentally representing spatial relations between the parts or locations of the objects or movements.^[12]Spatial visualization is especially important in the domains of science and technology. For example, an astronomer must mentally visualize the structures of a solar system and the motions of the objects within it.^[2] An engineer mentally visualizes the interactions of the parts of a machine or building that he or she is assigned to design or work with.^[2] Chemists must be able to understand formulas which can be viewed as abstract models of molecules with most of the spatial information deleted; spatial skills are important in restoring that information when more detailed mental models of the molecules are needed in the formulas.^[2] Spatial visualization also involves imagining and working with visual details of measurement, shapes, motion, features and properties through mental imagery and using this spatial relations to derive at an understanding to a problem. Whereas spatial perception involves understanding externally via the senses, spatial visualization is the understanding internally through mental imagery in one's mind.

Mental rotation is the ability to mentally represent, manipulate and rotate 2D - 3D objects or space quickly and accurately.Mental representations of physical objects can help utilize problem solving and understanding. For example, Hegarty (2004) showed that people manipulate mental representations for reasoning about mechanical problems, such as how gears or pulleys work.^[13] Similarly, Schwartz and Black (1999) found that doing such mental simulations such as pouring water improves people's skill to find the solution to questions about the amount of tilt required for containers of different heights and widths.^[13] In the field of sports psychology, coaches for a variety of sports (e.g. basketball, gymnastics, soccer or golf) have promoted players to use mental imagery and manipulation as one technique for performance in their game. (Jones & Stuth, 1997)^[13] Recent research (e.g., Cherney, 2008) has also demonstrated evidence that playing video games with constistent practice can improve mental rotation skills, for example improvements in women's scores after practice with a game that involved a race within a 3-D environment.^[13] Same effects have been seen playing action video games such as Unreal Tournament as well as the popular mainstream game Tetris.^[14] Jigsaw puzzles and Rubik's cube are also activities that involves higher level of mental rotation and can be practiced to improve spatial abilities over time.^[15][16][17]

Spatial working memory is the ability to temporarily store and record a certain amount of visual and spatial information in order to complete a task. This cognitive ability mediates individual differences in the capacity for higher level spatial abilities such as mental rotation. Spatial working memory involves storing large amounts of short-term spatial memories in relation to something called visuo-spatial sketchpad.It is used in the temporary storage and manipulation of visual-spatial information such as memorizing shapes, colours, location or motion of objects in space. It is also involved in tasks which consist of planning of spatial movements, like planning one's route through a complex building. The visuospatial sketchpad can be split into separate visual, spatial and possibly kin-aesthetic (movement) components. It's neurobiological function also correlates within the right hemisphere of the brain.^[18]

Research analysis and studies have found that spatial ability plays an important role in advanced educational credentials in the science, technology, engineering or math (STEM).^[19] From a statistical point of view, such analysis have found that likelihood or promise of attaining an advanced degree increases in relation to the magnitude of spatial ability. For example, a 2009 study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology found that 45% of those with STEM PhDs were within top percentile in a group of 400,000 participants who were analyzed for 11 years since they were in the 12th grade.^[19] Only less than 10% of those with STEM PhDs were below the top quartile in spatial ability during adolescence.^[19]The researchers then concluded the critical importance of spatial ability for STEM as a mediator of more advanced educational credentials and success.^[19]

Spatial visualization is especially important in the domains of science and technology. For example, an astronomer must mentally visualize the structures of a solar system and the motions of the objects within it.^[2] An engineer mentally visualizes the interactions of the parts of a machine or building that he or she is assigned to design or work with.^[2] Chemists must be able to understand formulas which can be viewed as abstract models of molecules with most of the spatial information deleted; spatial skills are important in restoring that information when more detailed mental models of the molecules are needed in the formulas.^[2] . Spatial manipulation skills are also beneficial in the field of structural geology when visualizing how rocks deform through time such as migration of a magma body through crust or progressive folding of a stratigraphic succession. Another spatial visualization skill known as visual penetrative ability is important in geology as it requires geologists to visualize what is inside of a solid object based on past knowledge.^[20]

Current literature also indicates that mathematics involves heavy visuo-spatial processing. Studies have found that gifted students in math perform better in spatial visualization than non-gifted students.^[12] A 2008 review published in the journal of Neuroscience Biobehavioural Reviews found evidence that visuo-spatial processing is intuitively involved in many aspects of processing numbers and calculating in math. For example, meaning of a digit in a multi-digit number is coded following spatial information given its relation to its position within the number.^[21] Another study found that numerical estimation might rely on integrating different visual-spatial cues (diameter, size, location ,measurement) to infer an answer.^[22] Another study published in 2014 also found evidence that mathematical calculation relies on the integration of various spatial processes.^[23] A 2015 study published in the journal of Frontiers in Psychology also found that numerical processing and arithmetic performance may rely on visual perceptual ability.^[24]

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