Spatial ability

Spatial ability or visuo-spatial ability is the capacity to understand, reason and remember the spatial relations among objects or space.

Visual-spatial abilities are used for everyday use from navigation, understanding or fixing equipment, understanding or estimating distance and measurement, and performing on a job. Spatial abilities are also important for success in fields such as sports, technical aptitude, mathematics, natural sciences, engineering, economic forecasting, meteorology, chemistry and physics. Not only do spatial abilities involve understanding the outside world, but they also involve processing outside information and reasoning with it through visual representation in the mind.

Spatial ability is the capacity to understand, reason and remember the spatial relations among objects or space. There are four common types of spatial abilities which include spatial or visuo-spatial perception, spatial visualization, mental folding and mental rotation. 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 spatial relationships in respect to the orientation of one's body despite distracting information.mental rotation on the other hand is the mental ability to manipulate and rotate 2D or 3D objects in space quickly and accurately. Lastly, spatial visualization is characterized as complicated multi-step manipulations of spatially presented information. 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 a certain amount of visual-spatial memories under attentional control 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 spatial relationships in respect to the orientation of one's body despite distracting information. It consist of being able to perceive and visually understand outside spatial information such as features, properties, measurement, shapes, position and motion. For example, when one is navigating through a dense forest they are using 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. Tests that measure spatial perception include the Rod and Frame test, where subjects must place a rod vertically while viewing a frame orientation of 22 degrees in angle, or the Water Level task, where subjects have to draw or identify a horizontal line in a tilted bottle.

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