Analysis: Developing your spatial ability has been shown to have a positive effect on performance in maths and other STEM-related subjects
You have probably seen a scene like this somewhere at some stage and you may have wondered how to put it all away neatly. Some would leave it for another day after a long day at work or school, while others would stare at the problem before deciding that it's time for another coffee. But to those who stayed to really get this over with: what would be the first thing you do?
Probably figuring out how to arrange them back on the shelves. But how would you do it? Does your body move first, or your mind? Either way, you would still see how you would have wanted it to look like in your mind, wouldn’t you? From how many books you would think could fit one row to whether they should be standing on their spine or lying on their side, you would have thought of several scenarios and find the one that would get you closest to the picture you have in your head.
If this was the case, congratulations! You’ve reminded yourself of an innate ability that most people are born with but tend to take for granted: spatial ability. Good news: it’s an ability that most engineers, architects, mathematicians, scientists, and many others use every day. Better news: your spatial ability can be developed and improved. Even better news: it's not just about rearranging messy bookshelves, but that's where we will start.
What is spatial ability?
Spatial ability refers to your ability to visualise an object in your mind and manipulate its shape, movement, or location. Not to be confused with imagination of the fantastical kind (though it can play a very important role in the design process), your ability to figure out the best way to rearrange those books on the shelves meant you had to understand the size and dimensions of the books in correlation to the available space on the shelves.
From National Geographic Science, can you pass this spatial awareness test?
Do the books lie on their side or stand on its spine for better use of space? That’s mental rotation, one of the many aspects of spatial ability. Trying to decide whether that giant hardcover book would fit with the shelf with the smaller books? That’s object combination, another aspect of spatial ability. Figuring out which book sizes would sit nice and neat on the shelf without looking out of shape? Spatial relation.
Most of us have already been doing this for years without realising that we are using it. In fact, if we look back in time, evidence of spatial ability being used can be found everywhere. From Hannibal's decision to march his army through the Alps to get the upper hand on the Romans during the Second Punic War, to John Snow solving the cholera pandemic in 1850s London by connecting the reported cases on a map in juxtaposition with the water pumps locations, their spatial ability has played a big role in shaping the history that we know today.
So what has this to do with STEM careers?
While the idea of visualising and manipulating books and messy shelves can look quite fantastical in our minds, the fact remains that it is only in our minds. Unless someone developed a way to read your mind, that fantastical book and messy shelf arrangement will never see the light of day outside the confines of our minds. At least until some people decided to find a way to explain that in a more sensical way.
In the 1860s, Robert Koch figured out how to grow bacteria on agar by using a microscope to help him visualise the process. Around the same time, Louis Pasteur drew a diagram to explain the process of pasteurisation so others would see and understand why drinking milk straight from cows was a very bad idea. Let’s also not forget these diagrams that you may have seen in your science textbooks from school, such as this one.
You can thank August Kekulé for demystifying the chemistry we know today after he visualised (or dreamed, in this case) benzene as 'a snake eating its own tail'. These were how scientists back then were figuring out ways to communicate their wondrous (and sometimes whimsical, like Kekulé) visualisation of the science that we still use today. With all these established, scientists nowadays were able to use them to further our understanding of the world around us in ways they were not able to do so back in the day.
Now, imagine that the bookshelf is a complex machinery, the book is the missing piece that could make the machine work more effectively, and you are an engineer who is familiar with the make and shape of this machine. The same questions you had about how to put that book on the shelf is the same as this engineer who is trying to fix or improve this complex machinery.
Or take that complicated wordy math problem, asking you how many more apples poor John needs to fit his half-filled crate. Thinking spatially, you would be able to visualise John scratching his head while also seeing how filled that crate is with apples and how much space is left to fill it to the brim.
The fact that you were able to visualise that neat bookshelf that you have mentally arranged showed how you were using your spatial ability to solve that problem
Many studies have shown that developing children’s spatial ability has had a positive effect on their performance in maths. Being able to relate numbers, strange symbols and John’s apple conundrum to tangible concepts helped in their understanding of mathematical word problems.
Improving one’s spatial ability levels have been known to show positive improvements in math performance and at times, in STEM-related subjects too. The fact that spatial ability can be developed further proves that there is a chance to improve children’s accessibility to STEM-related subjects, especially after seeing its low intake in recent times and the latest PISA and TIMMS scores.
While a lot of the studies mentioned above mostly revolve around children, it does not mean that you, the adult reader, are out of the loop. The fact that you were able to visualise that neat bookshelf that you have mentally arranged showed how you were using your spatial ability to solve that problem! And if you continue thinking along these lines while being aware of your spatial ability, you may, in time, have the potential to improve it and maybe, like the scientists from before, produce something novel that may help us in our future endeavours. Make use of the space around you. Think spatially.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
