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Why Spatial is Special in Education, Learning, and Everyday Activities

This thematic series, published in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, focuses on spatial ability and spatial thinking. 

People's thinking about, with, and in space has been extensively studied in the literatures of psychology, education, and other related fields. In the context of education, researchers have shown that spatial ability correlates significantly, over and above mathematical and verbal ability, with students' interest in STEM disciplines, and affects their eventual occupational choices. 

The existence of large individual differences in the extent, accuracy, and flexibility of internal representations of our spatial environments is now stimulating research. The pervasive availability of geospatial information raises concern about negative effects on people’s geospatial literacy and awareness. This special issue aims to bring together articles on questions such as: What is spatial thinking? Is it related to spatial ability and other abilities? To academic achievements in different fields? Can it be taught and trained? Brought into the classroom?

Edited by: 

  • Toru Ishikawa
  • Nora Newcombe

This collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles have undergone the journal’s standard peer-review process. The Guest Editors declare no competing interests.

  2. This article represents the findings from the qualitative portion of a mixed methods study that investigated the impact of middle school students’ spatial skills on their plate tectonics learning while using a...

    Authors: Colleen M. Epler-Ruths, Scott McDonald, Amy Pallant and Hee-Sun Lee
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:61
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  3. Reference frames ground spatial communication by mapping ambiguous language (for example, navigation: “to the left”) to properties of the speaker (using a Relative reference frame: “to my left”) or the world (...

    Authors: Steven M. Weisberg and Anjan Chatterjee
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:53
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  4. Prior research has revealed positive effects of spatial activity participation (e.g., playing with blocks, sports) on current and future spatial skills. However, research has not examined the degree to which s...

    Authors: Emily Grossnickle Peterson, Adam B. Weinberger, David H. Uttal, Bob Kolvoord and Adam E. Green
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:43
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  5. Navigating an unfamiliar city almost certainly brings out uncertainty about getting from place to place. This uncertainty, in turn, triggers information gathering. While navigational uncertainty is common, lit...

    Authors: Ashlynn M. Keller, Holly A. Taylor and Tad T. Brunyé
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:42
    Content type: Review article Published on:

  7. Most everyday activities involve delayed intentions referring to different event structures and timelines. Yet, past research has mostly considered prospective memory (PM) as a dual-task phenomenon in which th...

    Authors: Veit Kubik, Fabio Del Missier and Timo Mäntylä
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:36
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  8. Mental rotation ability is associated with successful advances in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and occupations. Meta-analyses have shown consistent sex disparities in ment...

    Authors: Daniela Alvarez-Vargas, Carla Abad and Shannon M. Pruden
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:31
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  9. Spatial thinking skills are strongly correlated with achievement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields and emerging research suggests that interventions aimed at building students’...

    Authors: Kristin M. Gagnier and Kelly R. Fisher
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:29
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  10. Characteristics of both teachers and learners influence mathematical learning. For example, when teachers use hand gestures to support instruction, students learn more than others who learn the same concept wi...

    Authors: Mary Aldugom, Kimberly Fenn and Susan Wagner Cook
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:27
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  11. This study investigated the impact of handedness on a common spatial abilities task, the mental rotation task (MRT). The influence of a right-handed world was contrasted with people’s embodied experience with ...

    Authors: You Cheng, Mary Hegarty and Elizabeth R. Chrastil
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:25
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  13. Spatial reasoning is a critical skill in many everyday tasks and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. The current study examined how training on mental rotation (a spatial reasonin...

    Authors: Katherine C. Moen, Melissa R. Beck, Stephanie M. Saltzmann, Tovah M. Cowan, Lauryn M. Burleigh, Leslie G. Butler, Jagannathan Ramanujam, Alex S. Cohen and Steven G. Greening
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:20
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  14. Spatial skills are an important component of success in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. A majority of what we know about spatial skills today is a result of more than 100 years of res...

    Authors: Kinnari Atit, David H. Uttal and Mike Stieff
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:19
    Content type: Review article Published on:

  15. Considering how spatial thinking connects to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) outcomes, recent studies have evaluated how spatial interventions impact elementary students’ math learning....

    Authors: Heather Burte, Aaron L. Gardony, Allyson Hutton and Holly A. Taylor
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:17
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  16. Investigating the relationship between the human body and its spatial environment is a critical component in understanding the process of acquiring spatial knowledge. However, few empirical evaluations have lo...

    Authors: Jiayan Zhao, Mark Simpson, Jan Oliver Wallgrün, Pejman Sajjadi and Alexander Klippel
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:14
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  17. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards inspectors are faced with the difficult task of learning the layout of complex nuclear facilities while being escorted through the facilities. This study ad...

    Authors: Mallory C. Stites, Laura E. Matzen and Zoe N. Gastelum
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:13
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  18. Anyone who has ever found themselves lost while driving in an unfamiliar neighborhood or forgotten where they parked their car can appreciate the importance of being able to navigate their environment. Navigat...

    Authors: Vanessa Vieites, Shannon M. Pruden and Bethany C. Reeb-Sutherland
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:12
    Content type: Original article Published on:

  19. Mental rotation (MR) is the ability to transform a mental representation of an object so as to accurately predict how the object would look from a different angle (Sci 171:701–703, 1971), and it is involved in...

    Authors: Scott P. Johnson and David S. Moore
    Citation: Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 5:10
    Content type: Review article Published on: