Spatial Reasoning

About the Spatial Reasoning exercise

Picturing how something looks after it turns is everyday work: fitting a lid onto a container, reading a map held the other way up, loading a dishwasher, working out which way a key goes in, following a diagram to assemble a shelf. After a stroke or brain injury, or with changes in visual perception, that inner turn can become slow or unreliable, and a flipped picture can pass for a turned one.

Spatial Reasoning is the Visual Spatial section of the Visual Perception Workbook for Adults, Volume 2, on screen. The first figure turns to make the second; turn the third figure the same way and pick the result. Level 1 turns everyday pictures flat on the page, Level 2 turns cube figures in space by a quarter turn, and Level 3 adds half turns and two-step turns. Each answer is timed, and a round of 6 to 30 items ends with accuracy, speed, and a count of each kind of mistake.

What Spatial Reasoning practices

Spatial reasoning

Working out the turn from the example pair, then applying the same turn to a different figure: a quarter turn on the page, or a turn about one of three axes in space.

Mirror discrimination

Telling a turned figure from its flipped twin. Every picture and every cube figure is chosen so that a mirror image can never be reached by turning, so the mirror option is always wrong for a reason.

Visual perception

Reading the shape of a line drawing or a shaded cube figure accurately enough to hold it in mind while the options are compared, including which cubes sit in front and which behind.

Working memory

Holding the example's turn and the third figure together, and checking each option against both without losing the thread.

How the tool works and what it records

Turn it the same way shows an example pair and a third figure with 3 to 5 options, only one of which is the third figure after the same turn; the other options are the mirror image, the wrong turn, or a figure with one cube moved. Figures are everyday pictures (43 line drawings from the workbook's art, each lopsided enough that every turn and flip looks different), block shapes, or cube figures of 5 to 7 cubes drawn with shaded faces. Turns are quarter turns, quarter and half turns, or half and two-step turns for cube figures. Two further tasks use the same drawings: find the boxed cube figure turned in space among its mirror image and near copies, and make a stated turn (a quarter turn clockwise, a half turn, or a turn followed by a flip). Rounds run 6 to 30 items with feedback after each item or only at the end, plus a large-print mode. With feedback after each item, a wrong answer is named before the next item: the mirror image, the wrong turn, a cube in a different place.

Results report accuracy, median speed, mirror confusions (a flipped figure taken for a turn), wrong turns (the wrong way, or no turn at all), total time, and correct answers with mean speed for each size of turn. Three presets, the workbook's three levels, are free, 5 rounds a day; Pro unlocks the settings dials, unlimited rounds, a printable worksheet with answer key, and saves rounds to the session log.

Screen or paper?

The screen suits this task when timing matters, when feedback after each item helps, and because every round is generated fresh: no figure repeats in the same pose. Paper suits a session without a device, or a client who likes to turn the page in their hands while working it out; the printable set and the Pro worksheet export both come with an answer key, and the Volume 2 workbook holds 38 of these exercises in print.

The printable version is the Visual Spatial worksheet set on rehabworksheets.com, and there is a free visual spatial worksheet to try first, with no email required.

Using it well

• Start at Level 1. Everyday pictures turned flat on the page give the idea of the task without any depth to work out. Play it a few times before moving to cube figures, so later rounds have something to compare against.
• Say the turn out loud. Before looking at the options, name what the example did: a quarter turn to the right, a half turn, tipped away. Then apply the words to the third figure. The options are easier to check once the turn has a name.
• Use the wrong answers. With feedback after each item, a wrong answer is named. A run of mirror confusions means flipped figures are being accepted; a run of wrong turns means the direction is being lost. Each suggests a different thing to practice.
• Move up one dial at a time. Go from quarter turns to quarter and half turns before adding two-step turns, and from 5 cubes to 6 before 7. Add a fifth option last.
• Answer by keyboard when tapping is hard. Option buttons take Enter or the space bar as well as a tap, and large-print mode makes the figures bigger. In a partner session, one person can point or say a letter while the other presses.

Common questions