Spatial Creativity: What Is It?

A study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology revealed that “of those students in the top 1% of spatial talent, roughly 70% were not in the top 1% in either math or verbal talent – showing a large fraction of students having the high spatial but lower math/verbal profile”.

What’s more, a new study published in Psychological Science has found a solid link between early spatial talent and creativity in adult life.

What is spatial talent?

It is “the ability to generate, retain, retrieve, and transform well-structured visual images”.

In other words, it is the ability to imagine in the minds eye and mentally manipulate objects that leads to great invention. Think Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, all of whom had extraordinary spatial talent. This kind of talent is often found in most of the artists, engineers, architects and surgeons.

Unfortunately, as spatially talented students scored low in math or verbal assessments, they are often been neglected in the school systems. Their creative potential is then left unnoticed and under-developed as most of the standardized tests tend to focus more on math, verbal and writing skills, but not inclusive of a spatial measure.

How can we recognize this spatial talent in children then?

Being observant and giving the children the freedom of expression may help in developing their spatial talent. Isn’t it a great thing to do if we give them the space to let their imagination goes wild, instead of putting all the focus on achieving high scores in standardized tests?

As we often hear, everyone has his talent and call on Earth.

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For a deeper look into spatial creativity and related research, read the original article Why We Need to Value Students’ Spatial Creativity by Jonathan Wai, researcher at the Duke University Talent Identification Program and Case Western Reserve University and writer of “Finding the Next Einstein: Why Smart is Relative” for Psychology Today.