Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums GT Research Spatial Skill Is Early Sign of Creativity

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/us/study-finds-early-signs-of-creativity-in-adults.html
Study Finds Spatial Skill Is Early Sign of Creativity
By DOUGLAS QUENQUA
New York Times
July 15, 2013

A gift for spatial reasoning — the kind that may inspire an imaginative child to dismantle a clock or the family refrigerator — may be a greater predictor of future creativity or innovation than math or verbal skills, particularly in math, science and related fields, according to a study published Monday in the journal Psychological Science.

The study looked at the professional success of people who, as 13-year-olds, had taken both the SAT, because they had been flagged as particularly gifted, as well as the Differential Aptitude Test. That exam measures spatial relations skills, the ability to visualize and manipulate two-and three-dimensional objects. While math and verbal scores proved to be an accurate predictor of the students’ later accomplishments, adding spatial ability scores significantly increased the accuracy.

The researchers, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, said their findings make a strong case for rewriting standardized tests like the SAT and ACT to focus more on spatial ability, to help identify children who excel in this area and foster their talents.

“Evidence has been mounting over several decades that spatial ability gives us something that we don’t capture with traditional measures used in educational selection,” said David Lubinski, the lead author of the study and a psychologist at Vanderbilt. “We could be losing some modern-day Edisons and Fords.”

Following up on a study from the 1970s, Dr. Lubinski and his colleagues tracked the professional progress of 563 students who had scored in the top 0.5 percent on the SAT 30 years ago, when they were 13. At the time, the students had also taken the Differential Aptitude Test.

Years later, the children who had scored exceptionally high on the SAT also tended to be high achievers — not surprisingly — measured in terms of the scholarly papers they had published and patents that they held. But there was an even higher correlation with success among those who had also scored highest on the spatial relations test, which the researchers judged to be a critical diagnostic for achievement in technology, engineering, math and science.



The paper is

Kell, H. J., Lubinski, D., Benbow, C. P., & Steiger, J. H. (2013). Creativity and technical innovation: Spatial ability’s unique role. Psychological Science, 24

Parents can have their children take the Spatial Test Battery http://cty.jhu.edu/talent/testing/about/stb.html if they think they have unusual spatial ability.

Kinda depends on the nature of the testing and spatial delays. If it is mainly a physical spatial issue, then early IQ test type manipulative test are going to be inaccurate measures (e.g. WISC block design.) I can personally guarantee that internal spatial reasoning and external spatial abilities are not inherently linked.

As to the reporting, I'm thinking that reasoning backwards from this HG+ cohort for implications to SAT content doesn't make sense. I also am not sure the research inference that associates certain tangible outcomes (e.g. patents) are translatable as creativity.

... more like perseverance.

Here's the full text of the study:

Spatial Ability for STEM Domains

I have to say, as a PhD holder in the physical sciences, and someone who would have been ripe for inclusion in this study...

they might be on to something here. The best way to describe how I feel (and how other scientists I know feel, those I've talked to about what makes us tick)-- the sample questions that they listed?

I like doing those things. AVIDLY. It's like a part of my brain turns on and lights up somewhere, and I kind of feel the way a Border Collie responds to seeing stock. I can feel it. It's like an instinctive drive. Figuring out and understanding 'problems' of that nature just... does... something for us. It is a reward.

I never discovered that, really, until I was in college, though, that pure, obsessive zeal. It's more than purely spatial ability-- it's the intersection of abstract and spatial reasoning.


That wasn't the most informative thing about this paper, though.
Nope. The CONTROL group's numbers were pretty interesting all by themselves.

Check. out. those Ed. D. numbers.... whoahhhhh-- is it just me, or is it more than a little bit appalling just how far into the third quadrant those people were, here??

Sadly, I'm not surprised. Maybe there's just a bit of truth to the saying that those who can't, teach?

I think that's a different study than referenced in the article, but very intersting. Thanks for the link. It's appalling and rofl level disturbing, so low verbal ability Ed go on to teach our kids, but the lowest ones go on to teach future teachers?

Thank you for that article! I am ruminating on how this fits with a lot of people I know.

It also supports my case (to me anyway) in my radical disagreement with school over how my HG+ child, who is not hugely mathy (but definitely spatially gifted), needs to learn math...

Charles Murray explains why spatial ability will likely not be tested on the SAT or ACT (more than it already is with simple geometry questions):

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/ho...tify-more-of-our-most-talented-students/
How political correctness will kill an easy way to identify more of our most talented students
by Charles Murray
July 16, 2013, 4:02 pm

The United States’ economy desperately needs all the scientific, engineering, and IT geniuses it can find. One
of the most important functions that the SAT can serve is to identify young Americans with that kind of
intellectual potential.

For many years, the scholarly literature has indicated that we have been missing a lot of that talent because
one of its key components, spatial ability, is not identified by the verbal component of the SAT and only
partially identified by the math component. The current best guess is that we’re failing to identify about half
of students within the top one percent of spatial ability. That estimate comes from an important new study by
scholars at Vanderbilt University about to be published in Psychological Science and already summarized in
the New York Times.

The good news is that IQ tests have accurately measured spatial ability for decades and the items to do so
could easily be incorporated into the SAT. The bad news is that it’s extremely unlikely that the College Board,
which administers the SAT, will have the nerve to do so. Why? Because the largest gender differences and
the largest ethnic differences are found in the subtests that measure spatial skills. Here’s the dilemma facing
the top brass at the College Board: if they add a spatial component to go with their math and verbal
components, they will indeed identify lots of extremely talented students whose potential is underestimated
by the existing components of the SAT. But that spatial component will also show larger gender and ethnic
differences than the other components (if you’re curious, the big winners from such a revision of the SAT
would be Asians and males). What do you suppose the chances are that the College Board will be willing to
take the heat for such a result? If you want to make a bet, I’ll take zero and you can have everything else.

I was quite amused by business majors as well (figure 2).

Yes, my DH pointed that out to me with a great degree of malicious enjoyment, actually. He maintains that he could have told the authors that without any fancy data analysis, after living in a Dilbert world for so long.

Bostonian, there is a potential second contender in the explanations department.

What percentage of people working for ETS do you suppose are Ed.D.'s, anyway?

Hmmmm....

It's not surprising when the standardized test for admission is elementary level for math! I once got into a debate with a prof who argued that our whole class was 120+. Business degrees are the biggest money grab since law school.

But, in all seriousness, there's a lot of heterogeneity of talent in the market across schools. The top schools have a quite deep talent pool. My class was mostly engineers, entrepreneurs, economists, mathematicians, bankers, and scientists with graduate degrees. Some of the smartest people I've met have MBAs. But, I'm biased.

I am intrigued by this study and find it validating. As a psychologist, and as a parent of two gifted kids, I have always recognized how strongly spatial skills correspond with a certain type of intelligence. These skills need to be identified earlier and nurtured. They not only correspond with STEM fields, but also with music, art, strategic planning, conceptual abilities, etc.

Rudimentary verbal and math aptitude tests just don't pick up on this. Spatially gifted kids are overlooked and these skills are rarely challenged. Some parents may notice them and encourage their children to become involved in robotics, chess, art, etc. But schools need to pick up the pace and offer more opportunities.