What are spatial skills?

There are four common abilities associated with spatial skills:

• Spatial perception

This skill refers to the ability to perceive spatial relationships in direct relation to your own body, even when distracting information is at play. Spatial perception consists of an understanding of visual-spatial elements such as features, properties, measurements, shapes, positions, and motions.

• Mental rotation

This skill is the ability to mentally visualize and rotate 2D and 3D objects in space accurately and quickly. Proper use also does not distort the object during any point of its rotation; it should remain unchanged. This skill helps with problem-solving and accurate understanding.

• Spatial visualization

This has to do with complex, multifaceted manipulations of spatially presented data. This utilizes mental visualization of specific objects and spatial imagery, which is the ability to mentally represent spatial relations between the parts or specific locations of the objects or movement.

This skill is utilized very often in the science and technology spaces.

• Mental folding

Mental folding is a complex spatial visualization that involves the folding of 2D patterns or material into 3D objects and representations.

Compared to other studies, mental folding has had relatively little research and study. In comparison to mental rotation, mental folding is a non-rigid spatial transformation ability which means features of the manipulated object end up changing, unlike mental rotation.