Title: What Is Spatial Intelligence?
Headings: Spatial Intelligence
Spatial Intelligence
From Howard Gardner's Nine Intelligences
Importance in Education
Enhancing Spatial Intelligence
Temple Grandin
Neils Bohr
I. M. Pei
Source

Content: our editorial process
Melissa Kelly
Updated May 30, 2019
Spatial intelligence is one of researcher Howard Gardner's nine multiple intelligences. The word spatial comes from the Latin " spatium" meaning "occupying space." A teacher may logically conclude that this intelligence involves how well a student may process information that is presented visually in one or more dimensions. This intelligence includes the ability to visualize objects and rotate, transform, and manipulate them. Spatial intelligence is a foundational intelligence upon which many of the other eight intelligences rely and interact. Engineers, scientists, architects, and artists are among those that Gardner sees as having high spatial intelligence. Gardner seems to struggle a bit to give specific examples of those with high levels of spatial intelligence. Gardner does mention, in passing, famous artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Pablo Picasso as examples of those with high spatial intelligence. However, he gives few telling examples, even in the nearly 35 pages he spends on spatial intelligence in his original work on the subject "Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences," published in 1983.