So, DS said something today that I found interesting and odd. He was talking about math and visualizing and I said to him "You have trouble visualizing, huh?" He said, "No, I can visualize I just can't turn the image around in my head or count things on it or anything." He used a cube as an example. He said that he can see the cube in his head but he can not turn it around or count the corners or the vertices in his head. Oddly, he can do arithmetic in his head really well. He stands at the check-out line adding our items in his head trying to compete with the register. So just wondering if anyone has any insight on this... Is this a common thing kids have trouble with? I wonder if it can get better? How to help it? Just curious. I guess it could be nothing at all too...

I suppose it is related to what AEH pointed out in a previous post re digits reversed pertaining to "visual memory channel" That in order to be successful at digits reversed, for example, "one inputs the digit sequence into something like a visual scratch pad in the brain. Those who are most successful then read it off the scratch pad, but backwards. If your visual scratch pad isn't very big, or has a short expiration time, you will have a hard time with digits reversed. This is most likely why a child with DCD might be so much more successful with digits forwards, but tank digits backwards. Both DCD and digits backwards are connected to perceptual deficits."

So perhaps this a manifestation of his "perceptual deficits" I wish there were a way to work on this "perceptual deficits" issue - he doesn't have to gifted in that area, I realize, but I'd love to see closer to normal in it as it would probably make things easier and his work more efficient....

No real answers here, just wanted to share that there are extremely intelligent people who cannot, for example, follow accurate/intuitive assembly instruction illustrations. These individuals seem to develop and utilize compensatory/supportive skills, such as color-coding or adding numbers to each side/surface of each component.

I think this is a spatial relations type skill. Some people are born with the ability to rotate 3D objects in their mind, and others are not. As long as his spatial relations skills are at least average, I wouldn't worry. I have one who can visualize rotating and assembling 3D objects in her head, one who can't do this (but can see ahead many moves in stuff like chess), and one who is somewhere in between. All three are very bright kids (first two have been IDed as gifted, third kid is only 9 and we didn't get the others IDed until 7th grade).

Arithmetic is actually more of a sequential skill (think number lines), and thus not that closely related to spatial manipulations. I think of arithmetic as learning the language of mathematics; I often see kids with spatial/NVLD difficulties who did fine with arithmetic, but then hit a wall when they reached abstract math in high school, and especially geometry, which is highly spatial.

On the other hand, if it doesn't appear to get in his way, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Individuals with strong fluid reasoning skills usually find ways to compensate for relative weaknesses using their strengths. I don't have particularly strong spatial skills myself (just ask anyone who has ever tried to give me directions to a new place!), but it certainly hasn't prevented me from successfully completing coursework in math-heavy subjects all the way up through quantum chemistry. He will discover strategies that work for him, often ones that involve organizing information or skills into vivid, personally meaningful groupings or storylines (sequences).

I agree-- DH and I are at opposite ends of this spectrum.

Along with this spatial ability seems to be an ability to "visualize" maps internally, too. I can memorize routes from a quick look at Google maps, and GPS merely irritates me. I'm also the packing zen-master at our house. My DH is more or less helpless with this kind of thing, but my internal buffer has nearly zero capacity for auditory or especially numerical information. Only visual/spatial.

DH, on the other hand, can memorize verbal/auditory information very well-- so well that he needn't take notes much of the time, and he has NO trouble recalling digits up to 14 or so-- and can retain them for hours.

He had to work very hard to 'get' the spatial side of symmetry operators, molecular geometry, etc. That stuff is almost crazy easy for me-- it's the mathematical representations that seem awkward and clunky to me, but he found group theory an epiphany because he could finally "translate" all that stuff that hadn't made sense before.

I think of this ability as being like an internal Holo-deck, to use the term from Star Trek NG. If I can build it in my head (and mostly I can), then I can rotate, slice, dice, etc. etc. etc. Easy.

Give me a phone number, though, and I can't keep it in working memory long enough to DIAL it. Seriously. I can keep about three digits in my working memory.

Minecraft is great for building that skill (visual spatial rotating objects).

DD is really good with digits backwards but says she is just remembering the sound and sequence of them, not visualizing. She has a really high PR WISC score. DS is my more obviously visual kid, in that he memorizes things like maps, is great with rotating objects, but he doesn't do as well with digit span (forwards or backwards).

My ability to stuff like that has improved a lot as I aged but it is still probably solidly average. If you can find something he enjoys that helps develop the skills a bit more that would be great but I don't think it is a major problem. Mine improved when I learnt Aikido and used to visualise the technigues before sleeping.

This. My husband & I are both that way. We drive other people nuts because we like to talk about pro's & con's and best possible directions to where we are driving. My son is the same way. Drives my mother up a WALL, when she hears us doing it. On the other hand we don't really enjoy adding up numbers in our heads, but higher level abstract math is easy. I find it hard to understand why anyone finds Ikea directions confusing. On the other hand I can't spell, have struggled with this for years and am very thankful for the spell checkers on computers.

Well, I definitely got the spelling ability as well as the spatial thing, neither of which my spouse has, but our DD has the spelling ability but not the strength in the spatial domain that I have. My handicap in digit span more than makes up for it. People seriously do not believe me that I can't even keep a phone number in my head long enough to dial it or write it down, but it's true. I can memorize LONG digits when I use them often enough to commit them to long-term memory, though. I know my library card number (16 digits) by heart, for example.

Once I've been to a location, I have it "mapped" in my brain, though-- it's another savant thing that I can do, I guess. I am not entirely sure how I do it, but I get that one from my mother.


DH teases me that I was clearly a migratory songbird in another life.

I cannot rotate images in my head but I can go shift my position in my head and visualize what it looks like from different sides.

My digit span memory is the same as HK.

I have absolutely no sense of direction most of the time but once in awhile (mostly when I'm traveling), I know exactly where everything is.

I have never solved Rubik's Cube in my life and equally hopeless at chess but I am very mathy.

I do regret that I always believed I couldn't pursue certain fields like engineering or architecture because of my lack of spatial abilities.

My spatial skills are laughably bad. I could get lost in a cardboard box. I think it's at the level of an LD, though I just compensated all though school, somehow. Math was not a strength, but I did okay. I navigate by landmarks, which I remember well (again--compensatory) but I can't give directions to people, because it's like--oh, I see the BP gas station so now I turn. I can't even construct that in my head very well from memory. I can read and use a map just fine, but my ability to use a map of my home city and a map of a strange city are fairly similar. I have virtually no mental map of areas I should know, is what I'm saying, but I can USE one if given one.

I am wretchedly bad at chess.

I CAN put together Ikea furniture, but it's hard for me. I do MUCH better with directions that have words.

Oh, but I'm a crazy good speller. Won lots of bees as a kid. THAT I can see in my head!

Thanks all! So interesting to hear people's perspectives, how they visualize, etc. DS loves minecraft and, while I do not know much about it, he was on MC Edit this morning incidentally doing something in which rotating cubes was involved so I suppose he is working on it through minecraft. He also does chess - I don't think he is especially good but definitely learning and noticing where he is weak so I suppose that helps.

Ultramarina, I can't really deal with picture stuff - diagrams, maps, Ikea directions, either... I prefer instructions/directions with words too!

Thanks for sharing this strategy... I mentioned it to DS and he said he would try that.

I had a dream last night and thought of this thread. In my dream I was watching a car, and it flipped over and rolled multiple times. It was like a movie scene and I could see every aspect of the car as it moved. But when I try to do this awake, it is really hard (and I'm fairly poor with visual spatial ability in general). Makes me wonder about different parts of the brain being activated during sleep. Most of my dreams are very vivid with a lot of visual detail that I don't have awake.