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Visual/Spatial Intelligence
Spatial Smarts and the Mind's Eye
Picture in your mind a child who likes to draw and doodle, is good at jigsaw puzzles and following maps, and can build amazing things with blocks. This child who has vivid dreams and imagines wild pictures, and who prefers books with lots of illustrations. You've just pictured a child with Spatial Intelligence, and to create that picture, you used spatial gifts.
A spatially gifted person sees both the real world and the pictures in her mind with more clarity than others, and can often reproduce them as works of art, models, or even buildings. Look for "the ability to graphically represent the world, to take the three-dimensional world and put it on a two-dimensional piece of paper," says Ellen Winner, professor of psychology at Boston College and Senior Research Associate at Harvard Project Zero. Another factor in Spatial Intelligence is a sense of aesthetics, the ability to draw "pleasing compositions" even if those are more abstract, according to Winner.
Spatially smart kids are good at jigsaw puzzles, Legos, and other sorts of construction toys because, as Winner says, "you have to be able to visualize where a piece might go by turning it around in your mind." They can also translate concepts from a two-dimensional piece of paper to the three-dimensional world, as when they follow the instructions on a Lego toy. Map reading is another example of this skill.
Winner says that many of the skills associated with Spatial Intelligence are undervalued, or less relevant in schools than other skills. Recalling a part of the Project Spectrum research undertaken by Project Zero investigators from 1984 to 1993, which included testing children for various intelligences, Winner gives an example where the children were asked to take apart a meat grinder and put it back together again. "One of the kids was a failure at school, and he was the star of this," she says. "The teachers were just in tears because they had found something he could be successful at."
In fact, children who are gifted spatially but not as strong in verbal or mathematical skills can end up feeling like failures if parents don't step in. "Here's a way to find a strength in your child that can make them feel good about themselves," says Winner. So have art and modeling materials on hand, enroll your child in art class, or do models or jigsaw puzzles with her. Play with Legos. "Have them read the map and direct you as you drive," Winner says. Encourage your child's Spatial Intelligence any way you can, and that picture in your mind's eye will no doubt be smiling.
Kinds of Multiple Intelligences
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