Image: Pavlen/iStock
-
The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
Read More »
Ninety years ago, Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman began an ambitious search for the brightest kids in California, administering IQ tests to several thousand of children across the state. Those scoring above an IQ of 135 (approximately the top 1 percent of scores) were tracked for further study. There were two young boys, Luis Alvarez and William Shockley, who were among the many who took Terman’s tests but missed the cutoff score. Despite their exclusion from a study of young “geniuses,” both went on to study physics, earn PhDs, and win the Nobel prize.
How could these two minds, both with great potential for scientific innovation, slip under the radar of IQ tests? One explanation is that many items on Terman’s Stanford-Binet IQ test, as with many modern assessments, fail to tap into a cognitive ability known as spatial ability. Recent research on cognitive abilities is reinforcing what some psychologists suggested decades ago: spatial ability, also known as spatial visualization, plays a critical role in engineering and scientific disciplines. Yet more verbally-loaded IQ tests, as well as many popular standardized tests used today, do not adequately measure this trait, especially in those who are most gifted with it.
Spatial ability, defined by a capacity for mentally generating, rotating, and transforming visual images, is one of the three specific cognitive abilities most important for developing expertise in learning and work settings. Two of these, quantitative and verbal ability, are quite familiar due to their high visibility in standardized tests like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). A spatial ability assessment may include items involving mentally rotating an abstract image or reasoning about an illustrated mechanical device functions. All three abilities are positively correlated, such that someone with above average quantitative ability also tends to have above average verbal and spatial ability. However, the relative balance of specific abilities can vary greatly between individuals. While those with verbal and quantitative strengths have opportunities to be identified by standardized tests or school performance, someone with particularly strong spatial abilities can go unrecognized through these traditional means.
A recent review, published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, analyzed data from two large longitudinal studies. Duke University’s Jonathan Wai worked with two of us (Lubinski and Benbow) and showed how neglecting spatial abilities could have widespread consequences. In both studies, participants' spatial abilities, along with many others, were measured in adolescence. The participants with relatively strong spatial abilities tended to gravitate towards, and excel in, scientific and technical fields such as the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and computer science. Surprisingly, this was after accounting for quantitative and verbal abilities, which have long been known to be predictive of educational and occupational outcomes. In a time when educators and policy-makers are under pressure to increase the number students entering these fields, incorporating knowledge of spatial ability into current practices in education and talent searches may be the key to improving such efforts.
The first source of data reviewed by Wai was a massive longitudinal study, Project Talent. While several studies have investigated the role of spatial abilities in tasks involving visual searching or path finding, Wai and colleagues focused on the relationship between spatial abilities and interests. finding that adolescents with strong spatial abilities also show greater interest than most in working with their hands, manipulating and tinkering with tangible things. While building, repairing, and working with inanimate objects might bore some, spatially gifted adolescents reported a preference for such activities. When those same individuals were contacted again in their late 20s, they had pursued and persisted in scientific and technical fields, earning bachelor's, Master's and doctoral degrees in these areas at higher rates than their peers. These findings suggest that the same child who likes to dismantle and reassemble old electronics may be particularly well-suited for doing the same in adulthood with electrons, molecules, or microchips.
See what we're tweeting about
16 Comments
Add CommentIt is a shame that our school systems still thinks a child is not intelligent unless they can read Latin and the child who can draw or paint a picture that is so beautiful that it will knock your socks off is considered mentally handicapped or dumb with no marketable skills. I think we are in desperate need to restructure and rebuild our educational system that will give equally to the Latin reader and equally to the drawer and painter.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the UK we have a course that runs through 2 phases of school 11 -16 and 16-18 called Geometric and Engineering Drawing. It is exactly designed to develop and test this spatial ability to manipulate and contextualise objects and line and to interpret and imagine three and two dimensional objects. Many either have got this ability - or haven't. However the key to its development seems to me to be that there is no further academic study of the field at University level. Funnily enough, whilst studying a PhD I came across a colleague trying to develop a novel material based upon a carbon fibre equivalent of cardboard. He was trying to work out properties of the spatial arrangement of the materials comprising the composite structure. He was having great difficulty doing this using graphical methods which we had used at age 16 to a more advanced level. He was an individual who clearly did not have this ability.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that there is scope for developing such a course at university level, including its philosophy. This would give juniors an example to aim for in higher academic study.
I can't even begin to imagine what prodigies in such study could achieve given the preponderance of computation which we never had at the time I was at school.
I would argue that such study may well be as significant as that of philosophy and logic in producing contributions to society.
I think this is especially so in unravelling the new synesthetic relations in the human brain which may rely upon fundamental spatial conceptuality of sensory data processing.
reflectogenesis@hotmail.co.uk
Peter Reynolds
I'd like to actually extend the idea to include the properties of dynamic objects and to use sensory augmentation devices combined with virtual reality and massively parallel computing to extend the conceptuality behind the basic mechanics of the course.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOne thing I did notice about this course is that there were a few savants - even amongst the the 30 or so students who studied it. I felt it gave confidence to individuals who were otherwise regarded as dimwits. Also - the variety of subjects within the course revealed some concepts that were very difficult for some to grasp whilst other subjects the same individuals found easy. So even with the more general context of spatial awareness - some of the different concepts are significantly different from the view of testing mental abilities. One of the subjects I never got to grips with was the graphical manipulation of projections of two dimensional lines in space. Called simply 'Lines In Space' colloquially within the subject.Whilst I was a comparative genius at rapidly interpreting and translatimg 3D and 2D images and projections - which intuitively one would have thought required a similar mental ability. However - out of the context of shape I found the projection of line onto different planes almost impossible. Others found it easy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis was first recognised in Scientific American in the April 1971 issue. It was included in the article on Dyslexia, and I have used the information in education ever since.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisZebulon is such a cool name.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy son is a visual/spacial learner. I don't know enough about this kind of thing to make an informed comment other than that once he got out of the public school system and in to college his grades went up a lot. I asked him why and he said it was 2 things; first is that college costs a lot, and secondly he can learn the way he wants instead of "the stupid way".
Take that for what it is worth, if anything. I've always scored in the super genius range on the old 1950s style IQ tests. What that taught me is that the old style IQ test is horribly wrong.
The modern education system is NOT designed to educate, but to produce people who can understand and obey orders, but do not have the capacity to question their validity. In other words, they become educated cannon fodder. Thank you, Hegel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost of modern education ignores most right-brain capacity, and concentrates on language and numbers, both left brain.
Young children are mostly right brain (apart from language and counting), although girls and boys use right brain differently. I postulate that right brain includes all emotions and senses, a view which seems to be finding supporting evidence in brain scanning.
Girls concentrate on relationships (emotions) while boys concentrate on physical things, like mud pies, bicycles and physical sports. It is my view that boys should not start school until around age 7, when they are ready for other kinds of activities.
Dear sir: I do agree with you. There are many outstanding examples in art history such as Leonardo, Vermeer, Paolo Ucello, Michelangelo, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Vik Muniz, Mauritz Escher, and so many excellent artist/scientists...Thanks for sharing your comment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think interactive technology (i.e. pads) and cloud applications will change the way children learn and how learning is measured. Tests in statis, like IQ and SAT, will be replaced by a real-time evaluation of a child's and a person's ability to think, create, relate and contribute to society.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany times it was proof that I.Q. test is hoax till most of researchers blindly believed it.Intelligent is vague term. If each individual is unique how can you judge them on statistical basis?.There are lot of example occurred when in I.Q.test student is far behind on average but in later year he show his brilliant intelligent. Take the example of Einstein or Newton both were far behind in school,how they showed their talent?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are different levels of spatio-temporal visualization that are generally right-brain intuitive functions that require left-brain rational translation according to circumstance. Visualization of 2D and 3D graphical forms generally assume a space-time framework of understanding within which these spatial forms exist. A capacity to visualize in this context is all to the good but there is more to it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is also a primary level of intuitive insight that is not dependent upon an assumed a priori space-time framework to begin with. Rather there is a way to delineate all possible varieties of spatio-temporal relationships as they derive from a direct insight into the structural dynamics of the whole cosmic order. The method emerges from hierarchical structural requirements implicit in the nature of universal wholeness that have not been properly recognized as fundamental to the meaningful integration of phenomenal experience at all levels.
This non-linguistic methodology is introduced in various articles freely available at www.cosmic-mindreach.com. It is a universal methodology that renders the structural dynamics of the creative process transparent. It can complement traditional approaches to the physical, biological and social sciences while lending them more meaningful direction. The introductory article Unified Theories, Fantasy and Cosmic Order was published in the ANPA (philosophy of physics) proceedings held at Cambridge UK in August 2008. Readers may find the site of interest.
I think a human is like a tree.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe brain is its fruit.
Ideas are its seeds.
Fed appropriately the fruit will ripen and at the appropriate time be productive.
If we recognize this ripening and provide the right fertiliser the garden will flourish.
To whom it may concern:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am writing in response to the recent article “Recognizing Spatial Intelligence” dated November 2, 2010. The criticisms of I.Q. testing, particularly as a means of recognizing potential, were not valid or well informed. At a minimum they were much too sweeping. Comprehensive I.Q. tests do include measures of spatial intelligence, but as subtests. This is true of the Wechsler tests and the Stanford-Binet as well as a variety of other instruments commonly used by psychologists. I believe Terman used an early version of the Stanford-Binet which would have included a variety of subtests that all feed into the overall IQ score and also yield other more focused scores. The subtests of IQ tests include measures of vocabulary, spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, general information, social reasoning, logic, mathematics and so on.
There is a long running controversy in intelligence testing between those who stress the overwhelming importance of a general intelligence and those that stress the existence special abilities with little or no correlation with other abilities. The major I.Q. tests are all some form of compromise between the two views. Any psychologist using an I.Q. test wisely and ethically is going to look at variations among the subtests. With many people the variations are minimal, but sometimes patterns emerge suggesting widely disparate abilities and these disparities may grow over time with life experiences and interests.
One might accuse Terman of ignoring students who had spikes of ability in certain areas, but did not make the final cutoff based on a total score or Full Scale IQ score. A more interesting question would be why individuals of great ability like Luis Alvarez or William Shockley did not cross the cutoff. Assuming they just didn’t have a bad day, I would hypothesize that they had lower scores in subtests where their abilities or interests did not cause them to do well. Imagine a future scientist who already is radically uninterested in literature, history or politics. It would be fascinating if the actual Terman study test protocols are somewhere stored away and open to more detailed analysis.
___________________
Nicholas F. O’Riordan, Licensed Clinical Psychologist
This article speaks to my heart. Many years after graduating from high school only because my mom read to me, I've recovered, reinterpreted my personal perception and am at Cambridge. I underwent many years of underachieving and self-depreciation before realizing the gift that would transform my life. This article is hopeful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am a visuospatial thinker, and my experience with IQ tests are as you've stated now, however that has not been the case in the course of my education. I tested nearly imbecile as a child, and contrast that with consideration for my abilities, which creates quite a reversal.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this