Picture Smart:Spatial Reasoning and Its Role in Cognition :: Psychology Essays

Picture Smart:Spatial Reasoning and Its Role in Cognition There are many theories about the nature of intelligence. The formal definition of intelligence is "the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge." One aspect or kind of intelligence, according Dr. Howard Gardner, founder of the multiple intelligence theory, is spatial intelligence(1). Spatial intelligence is one amongst eight kinds of intelligence. The most common description of spatial intelligence is the ability to be able to recreate one's visual experience and reasoning about shape, measurement, depiction and navigation. Spatial intelligence might be one of less familiar kind of intelligence, however it has wide implications in many academic and professional disciplines. It is extremely important in disciplines such as mathematics and computer science. Spatial Intelligence also accounts for the thinking process of engineers, architects, designers, sculptors and inventors. This paper is an over all comprehension of spatial reasoning and why it is important in learning and problem solving, it is an investigation into what spatial reasoning is and its role in learning and cognition. This paper will also address the neurobiology of spatial reasoning and discuss the specific areas and organization of the brain that accounts for spatial intelligence. There are many theories and models attempting to define spatial reasoning. The first model is called the MV/PD model. According to this model, spatial representation consist of two parts. The first is a metric diagram, which includes quantitative information and provides a substrate, which can support perceptual-like processing. The second part of the model is termed place vocabulary, which makes explicit qualitative distinction in shape and space relevant to the current task (2). Therefore, spatial reasoning is not just visualization of objects and space but also the ability to take qualitative information and then transformation them to spatial representations so that it can be better understood. Spatial reasoning is useful in physics, math and computer science and can be applied to different industries. Engineers use graphs to express complex relationships, such as temperature-entropy or pressure volume plots, Often these graphs are sketches, intended to convey qualitative information about the shapes of curves and relative magnitudes rather than precise numerical values(2). Therefore, spatial reasoning is an essential part of the thinking process of scientist and engineers because they need to understand and interpret qualitative information in graphs and models in order to gain critical understanding of the problems at hand. What exactly is the process through which humans use spatial reasoning to solve problems?