|Part of a series on Statistics|
Infographics (a clipped compound of "information" and "graphics") are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge intended to present information quickly and clearly. They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system's ability to see patterns and trends. Similar pursuits are information visualization, data visualization, statistical graphics, information design, or information architecture. Infographics have evolved in recent years to be for mass communication, and thus are designed with fewer assumptions about the readers' knowledge base than other types of visualizations. Isotypes are an early example of infographics conveying information quickly and easily to the masses.
Infographics have been around for many years and recently the increase of a number of easy-to-use, free tools have made the creation of infographics available to a large segment of the population. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have also allowed for individual infographics to be spread among many people around the world. Infographics are widely used in the age of short attention span.
In newspapers, infographics are commonly used to show the weather, as well as maps, site plans, and graphs for summaries of data. Some books are almost entirely made up of information graphics, such as David Macaulay's The Way Things Work. The Snapshots in USA Today are also an example of simple infographics used to convey news and current events.
Modern maps, especially route maps for transit systems, use infographic techniques to integrate a variety of information, such as the conceptual layout of the transit network, transfer points, and local landmarks. Public transportation maps, such as those for the Washington Metro and the London Underground, are well-known infographics. Public places such as transit terminals usually have some sort of integrated "signage system" with standardized icons and stylized maps.
In his 1983 "landmark book" The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Edward Tufte defines "graphical displays" in the following passage:
Graphical displays should
- show the data
- induce the viewer to think about the substance rather than about methodology, graphic design, the technology of graphic production, or something else
- avoid distorting what the data has to say
- present many numbers in a small space
- make large data sets coherent
- encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data
- reveal the data at several levels of detail, from a broad overview to the fine structure
- serve a reasonably clear purpose: description, exploration, tabulation, or decoration
- be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set.
Graphics reveal data. Indeed graphics can be more precise and revealing than conventional statistical computations.
While contemporary infographics often deal with "qualitative" or soft subjects, generally speaking Tufte's 1983 definition still speaks, in a broad sense, to what infographics are, and what they do—which is to condense large amounts of information into a form where it will be more easily absorbed by the reader.
In 1626, Christoph Scheiner published the Rosa Ursina sive Sol, a book that revealed his research about the rotation of the sun. Infographics appeared in the form of illustrations demonstrating the Sun's rotation patterns.
In 1786, William Playfair, an engineer and political economist, published the first data graphs in his book The Commercial and Political Atlas. To represent the economy of 18th Century England, Playfair used statistical graphs, bar charts, line graphs, area charts, and histograms. In his work, Statistical Breviary, he is credited with introducing the first pie chart.
Around 1820, modern geography was established by Carl Ritter. His maps included shared frames, agreed map legends, scales, repeatability, and fidelity. Such a map can be considered a "supersign" which combines sign systems—as defined by Charles Sanders Peirce—consisting of symbols, icons, indexes as representations. Other examples can be seen in the works of geographers Ritter and Alexander von Humboldt.
In 1857, English nurse Florence Nightingale used information graphics to persuade Queen Victoria to improve conditions in military hospitals. The principal one she used was the Coxcomb chart, a combination of stacked bar and pie charts, depicting the number and causes of deaths during each month of the Crimean War.
1861 saw the release of an influential information graphic on the subject of Napoleon's disastrous march on Moscow. The graphic's creator, Charles Joseph Minard, captured four different changing variables that contributed to Napoleon's downfall in a single two-dimensional image: the army's direction as they traveled, the location the troops passed through, the size of the army as troops died from hunger and wounds, and the freezing temperatures they experienced.
James Joseph Sylvester introduced the term "graph" in 1878 in the scientific magazine Nature and published a set of diagrams showing the relationship between chemical bonds and mathematical properties. Graph Theory 1736–1936, pp. 65. These were also some of the first mathematical graphs.
The Cologne Progressives developed an aesthetic approach to art which focused on communicating information. Gerd Arntz, Peter Alma and Augustin Tschinkel, all participants in this movement were recruited by Otto Neurath for the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum, where they developed the Vienna Method from 1926–1934. Here simple images were used to represent data in a structured way. Following the victory of Austrofascism in the Austrian Civil War, the team moved to the Netherlands where they continued their work rebranding it Isotypes (International System of TYpographic Picture Education). The method was also applied by IZOSTAT (ИЗОСТАТ) in the Soviet Union.
In 1942 Isidore Isou published the Lettrist manifesto, a document covering art, culture, poetry, film, and political theory. The included works, also called metagraphics and hypergraphics, are a synthesis of writing and visual art.
In 1958 Stephen Toulmin proposed a graphical argument model, called The Toulmin Model of Argumentation. The diagram contained six interrelated components used for analyzing arguments, and was considered Toulmin's most influential work, particularly in the field of rhetoric, communication, and computer science. The Toulmin Model of Argumentation became influential in argumentation theory and its applications.
In 1972 and 1973, respectively, the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft included on their vessels the Pioneer Plaques, a pair of gold-anodized aluminum plaques, each featuring a pictorial message. The pictorial messages included nude male and female figures as well as symbols that were intended to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft. The images were designed by Carl Sagan and Frank Drake and were unique in that their graphical meanings were to be understandable to extraterrestrial beings, who would have no conception of human language.
A pioneer in data visualization, Edward Tufte, wrote a series of books – Visual Explanations, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Envisioning Information – on the subject of information graphics. Referred to by The New York Times as the “da Vinci of Data”, Tufte began to give day-long lectures and workshops on the subject of infographics starting in 1993. As of 2012[update], Tufte still gives these lectures. To Tufte, good data visualizations represent every data point accurately and enable a viewer to see trends and patterns in the data. Tufte's contribution to the field of data visualization and infographics is considered immense, and his design principles can be seen in many websites, magazines, and newspapers today.
The infographics created by Peter Sullivan for The Sunday Times in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s were some of the key factors in encouraging newspapers to use more infographics. Sullivan is also one of the few authors who have written about information graphics in newspapers. Likewise the staff artists at USA Today, the United States newspaper that debuted in 1982, established the goal of using graphics to make information easier to comprehend. However, the paper has received criticism for oversimplifying news stories and for creating infographics that some find emphasize entertainment over content and data. Tufte coined the term chartjunk to refer to graphics that are visually appealing to the point of losing the information contained within them.
With vector graphics and raster graphics becoming ubiquitous in computing in the 21st Century, data visualizations have been applied to commonly used computer systems, including desktop publishing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
Closely related to the field of information graphics is information design, which is the creation of infographics.
By the year 2000, Adobe Flash-based animations on the Internet had made use of many key practices in creating infographics in order to create a variety of products and games.
Likewise, television began to incorporate infographics into the viewers' experiences in the early 2000s. One example of infographics usage in television and in pop culture is the 2002 music video by the Norwegian musicians of Röyksopp, for their song "Remind Me." The video was composed entirely of animated infographics. Similarly, in 2004, a television commercial for the French energy company Areva used animated infographics as an advertising tactic. Both of these videos and the attention they received have conveyed to other fields the potential value in using information graphics to describe complex information efficiently.
The field of journalism has also incorporated and applied information graphics to news stories. For stories that intend to include text, images, and graphics, the system called the maestro concept allows entire newsrooms to collaborate and organize a story to successfully incorporate all components. Across many newsrooms, this teamwork-integrated system is applied to improve time management. The maestro system is designed to improve the presentation of stories for busy readers of media. Many news based websites have also used interactive information graphics in which the user can extract information on a subject as they explore the graphic.
Many businesses use infographics as a medium for communicating with and attracting potential customers. Information graphics are a form of content marketing and have become a tool for internet marketers and companies to create content that others will link to, thus possibly boosting a company's reputation and online presence.
Religious denominations have also started using infographics. For example, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has made numerous infographics to help people learn about their faith, missionaries, temples, lay ministry, and family history efforts.
Infographics are finding a home in the classroom as well. Courses that teach students to create their own infographics using a variety of tools may encourage engagement in the classroom and may lead to a better understanding of the concepts they are mapping onto the graphics.
With the popularity of social media, infographics have become popular, often as static images or simple web interfaces, covering any number of topics. Such infographics are often shared between users of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Reddit. The hashtag #infographic was tweeted 56,765 times in March 2012 and at its peak 3,365 times in a span of 24 hours.
The three parts of all infographics are the visual, the content, and the knowledge. The visual consists of colors and graphics. There are two different types of graphics – theme, and reference. Theme graphics are included in all infographics and represent the underlying visual representation of the data. Reference graphics are generally icons that can be used to point to certain data, although they are not always found in infographics. Statistics and facts usually serve as the content for infographics and can be obtained from any number of sources, including census data and news reports. One of the most important aspects of infographics is that they contain some sort of insight into the data that they are presenting – this is the knowledge.
Infographics are effective because of their visual element. Humans receive input from all five of their senses (sight, touch, hearing, smell, taste), but they receive significantly more information from vision than any of the other four. Fifty percent of the human brain is dedicated to visual functions, and images are processed faster than text. The brain processes pictures all at once, but processes text in a linear fashion, meaning it takes much longer to obtain information from text. Entire business processes or industry sectors can be made relevant to a new audience through a guidance design technique that leads the eye. The page may link to a complete report, but the infographic primes the reader making the subject-matter more accessible. Online trends, such as the increasingly short attention span of Internet users, has also contributed to the increasing popularity and effectiveness of infographics.
When designing the visual aspect of an infographic, a number of considerations must be made to optimize the effectiveness of the visualization. The six components of visual encoding are spatial, marks, connection, enclosure, retinal properties, and temporal encoding. Each of these can be utilized in its own way to represent relationships between different types of data. However, studies have shown that spatial position is the most effective way to represent numerical data and leads to the fastest and easiest understanding by viewers. Therefore, the designers often spatially represent the most important relationship being depicted in an infographic.
There are also three basic provisions of communication that need to be assessed when designing an infographic – appeal, comprehension, and retention. "Appeal" is the idea that the communication needs to engage its audience. Comprehension implies that the viewer should be able to easily understand the information that is presented to them. And finally, "retention" means that the viewer should remember the data presented by the infographic. The order of importance of these provisions depends on the purpose of the infographic. If the infographic is meant to convey information in an unbiased way, such as in the domains of academia or science, comprehension should be considered first, then retention, and finally appeal. However, if the infographic is being used for commercial purposes, then appeal becomes most important, followed by retention and comprehension. When infographics are being used for editorial purposes, such as in a newspaper, the appeal is again most important but is followed first by comprehension and then retention.
However, the appeal and the retention can in practice be put together by the aid of a comprehensible layout design. Recently, as an attempt to study the effect of the layout of an infographic on the comprehension of the viewers, a new Neural Network based cognitive load estimation method was applied on different types of common layouts for the infographic design. When the varieties of factors listed above are taken into consideration when designing infographics, they can be a highly efficient and effective way to convey large amounts of information in a visual manner.
Data visualizations are often used in infographics and may make up the entire infographic. There are many types of visualizations that can be used to represent the same set of data. Therefore, it is crucial to identify the appropriate visualization for the data set and infographic by taking into consideration graphical features such as position, size, shape, and color. There are primarily five types of visualization categories – time-series data, statistical distributions, maps, hierarchies, and networking.
Time-series data is one of the most common forms of data visualization. It documents sets of values over time. Examples of graphics in this category include index charts, stacked graphs, small multiples, and horizon graphs. Index charts are ideal to use when raw values are less important than relative changes. It is an interactive line chart that shows percentage changes for a collection of time-series data based on a selected index point. For example, stock investors could use this because they are less concerned with the specific price and more concerned with the rate of growth. Stacked graphs are area charts that are stacked on top of each other, and depict aggregate patterns. They allow viewers to see overall patterns and individual patterns. However, they do not support negative numbers and make it difficult to accurately interpret trends. An alternative to stacked graphs is small multiples. Instead of stacking each area chart, each series is individually shown so the overall trends of each sector are more easily interpreted. Horizon graphs are a space efficient method to increase the data density of a time-series while preserving resolution.
Statistical distributions reveal trends based on how numbers are distributed. Common examples include histograms and box-and-whisker plots, which convey statistical features such as mean, median, and outliers. In addition to these common infographics, alternatives include stem-and-leaf plots, Q-Q plots, scatter plot matrices (SPLOM) and parallel coordinates. For assessing a collection of numbers and focusing on frequency distribution, stem-and-leaf plots can be helpful. The numbers are binned based on the first significant digit, and within each stack binned again based on the second significant digit. On the other hand, Q-Q plots compare two probability distributions by graphing quantiles against each other. This allows the viewer to see if the plot values are similar and if the two are linearly related. SPLOM is a technique that represents the relationships among multiple variables. It uses multiple scatter plots to represent a pairwise relation among variables. Another statistical distribution approach to visualize multivariate data is parallel coordinates. Rather than graphing every pair of variables in two dimensions, the data is repeatedly plotted on a parallel axis and corresponding points are then connected with a line. The advantage of parallel coordinates is that they are relatively compact, allowing many variables to be shown simultaneously.
Maps are a natural way to represent geographical data. Time and space can be depicted through the use of flow maps. Line strokes are used with various widths and colors to help encode information. Choropleth maps, which encode data through color and geographical region, are also commonly used. Graduated symbol maps are another method to represent geographical data. They are an alternative to choropleth map and use symbols, such as pie charts for each area, over a map. This map allows for more dimensions to be represented using various shapes, size, and color. Cartograms, on the other hand, completely distort the shape of a region and directly encode a data variable. Instead of using a geographic map, regions are redrawn proportionally to the data. For example, each region can be represented by a circle and the size/color is directly proportional to other information, such as population size.
Many data sets, such as spatial entities of countries or common structures for governments, can be organized into natural hierarchies. Node-link diagrams, adjacency diagrams, and enclosure diagrams are all types of infographics that effectively communicate hierarchical data. Node-link diagrams are a popular method due to the tidy and space-efficient results. A node-link diagram is similar to a tree, where each node branches off into multiple sub-sections. An alternative is adjacency diagrams, which is a space-filling variant of the node-link diagram. Instead of drawing a link between hierarchies, nodes are drawn as solid areas with sub-sections inside of each section. This method allows for size to be easily represented than in the node-link diagrams. Enclosure diagrams are also a space-filling visualization method. However, they uses containment rather than adjacency to represent the hierarchy. Similar to the adjacency diagram, the size of the node is easily represented in this model.
Network visualization explores relationships, such as friendships and cliques. Three common types are force-directed layout, arc diagrams, and matrix view. Force-directed layouts are a common and intuitive approach to network layout. In this system, nodes are similar to charged particles, which repel each other. Links are used to pull related nodes together. Arc diagrams are one-dimensional layouts of nodes with circular arcs linking each node. When used properly, with good order in nodes, cliques and bridges are easily identified in this layout. Alternatively, mathematicians and computer scientists more often use matrix views. Each value has an (x,y) value in the matrix that corresponds to a node. By using color and saturation instead of text, values associated with the links can be perceived rapidly. While this method makes it hard to view the path of the nodes,there are no line crossings, which in a large and highly connected network can quickly become too cluttered.
While all of these visualizations can be effectively used on their own, many modern infographics combine multiple types into one graphic, along with other features, such as illustrations and text. Some modern infographics do not even contain data visualization, and instead are simply a colorful and succinct ways to present knowledge. Fifty-three percent of the 30 most-viewed infographics on the infographic sharing site visual.ly did not contain actual data.
Infographics can be created by hand using simple everyday tools such as graph paper, pencils, markers, and rulers. However, today they are more often created using computer software, which is often both faster and easier. They can be created with general illustration software.
Diagrams can be manually created and drawn using software, which can be downloaded for the desktop or used online. Templates can be used to get users started on their diagrams. Additionally, the software allows users to collaborate on diagrams in real time over the Internet.
There are also numerous tools to create very specific types of visualizations, such as creating a visualization based on embedded data in the photos on a user's smartphone. Users can create an infographic of their resume or a “picture of their digital life.”
- A picture is worth a thousand words
- Argument map
- Digital dashboard
- Data Presentation Architecture
- Data visualization
- Graphic design
- Graphic image development
- Graphic organizers
- Information design
- List of information graphics software
- Scientific visualization
- Statistical graphics
- Technical illustration
- Isotype (picture language)
- Visualization (graphic)
- News Illustrated
- Maestro Concept
- Family tree
- Doug Newsom and Jim Haynes (2004). Public Relations Writing: Form and Style. p.236.
- Mark Smiciklas (2012). The Power of Infographics: Using Pictures to Communicate and Connect with Your Audience.
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- Playfair, William; Wainer, Howard; Spence, Ian (2005). Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas and Statistical Breviary. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-85554-9.
- Tufte, Edward (1983). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press. p. 13. ISBN 0-9613921-4-2.
- "The Profession of Geography: Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter". Archived from the original on 2012-10-06.
- Benking, Heiner, “Using Maps and Models, SuperSigns and SuperStructures”, 2005.
- 1st Berlin Symposium on Internet and Society, “Learnings from Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter towards the Grand Global Modern Communication Challenges”.
- Biggs, N., Lloyd, K., & Wilson, R. (1999).
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- Tufte, Edward R. (1990). Envisioning Information. ISBN 0-9613921-1-8.
- Tufte, Edward R. (2001) [1st Pub. 1983]. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (2nd ed.). ISBN 0-9613921-4-2.
- Tufte, Edward R. (1997). Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. ISBN 0-9613921-2-6.
- Freymann-Weyr, Jeffrey, “Edward Tufte, Offering 'Beautiful Evidence'”, NPR.org, August 20, 2006.
- Romano, Andrew, “How Master Information Designer Edward Tufte Can Help Obama Govern”, thedailybeast.com, March 9, 2010.
- Röyksopp (19 November 2008). "Remind Me" – via Vimeo.
- "Why you should build your infographics in HTML5 and CSS3.". Paul Rouget. Retrieved 2012-07-10.
- Khazan, Olga, “How can businesses use infographics?”, washingtonpost.com, April 8, 2012.
- "The Anatomy of Creating Great Infographics". Venture Harbour. Retrieved 2013-10-27.
- "SEO Guide to Creating Viral Linkbait and Infographics". Distilled. Retrieved 2012-07-19.
- "Topics", Newsroom [MormonNewsroom.org], The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, retrieved 17 April 2014
- "8 Examples for Incorporating Infographics in Classrooms". 17 April 2015.
- "The Anatomy Of An Infographic: 5 Steps To Create A Powerful Visual – SpyreStudios". 18 November 2009.
- "The beauty of data visualization".
- Turnbull, Dominic. "EPRA real economy infographic". www.epra.com/media/Real_estate_in_the_real_economy_-_EPRA_INREV_report_1353577808132.PDF. Archived from the original on 13 December 2012. Retrieved 6 December 2012.
- Jason Lankow, Josh Ritchie, Ross Crooks (2012). Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling
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- Heiner Benking (1981–1988) Requisite inquiry and time-line: computer graphics-infographics http://benking.de/infographics/ see there: Computer Graphics in the Environmental Sector – Possibilities and Limitations of Data-visualisation this citation in chapter 3: technical possibilities and human potentials and capacities, "a picture is more than 10.000 words", and "10.000 miles equal 10.000 books".
- Sullivan, Peter. (1987) Newspaper Graphics. IFRA, Darmstadt.
- Jacques Bertin (1983). Semiology of Graphics. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Translation by William Berg of Semiologie Graphique. Paris: Mouton/Gauthier-Villars, 1967.
- William S. Cleveland (1985). The Elements of Graphing Data. Summit, NJ: Hobart Press. ISBN 978-1-58465-512-1
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- William S. Cleveland (1993). Visualizing Data. Summit, NJ: Hobart Press. ISBN 978-0-9634884-0-4
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- Edward R. Tufte (1983). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Edition, Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
- Edward R. Tufte (1990). Envisioning Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press.
- Edward R. Tufte (1997). Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative. Cheshire,
- Edward R. Tufte (2006). Beautiful Evidence. Cheshire. CT: Graphics Press.
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- Veszelszki, Ágnes (2014). Information visualization: Infographics from a linguistic point of view. In: Benedek, András − Nyíri, Kristóf (eds.): The Power of the Image Series Visual Learning, vol. 4. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp. 99−109.
- Sandra Rendgen, Julius Wiedemann (2012). Information Graphics. Taschen Publishing. ISBN 978-3-8365-2879-5
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|Wikimedia Commons has media related to Information graphics.|
- Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography, Statistical Graphics and Data Visualization
- Visual Display of Quantitative Information


“Why stories matter for children’s learning. Scholars have found that stories have a strong influence on children’s understanding of cultural and gender roles. Stories do not just develop children’s literacy; they convey values, beliefs, attitudes and social norms which, in turn, shape children’s perceptions of reality.”
“If you want your children to be smart, tell them stories. If you want them to be brilliant, tell them more stories.” – attributed to Albert Einstein
IMAGERY ARTS – FOUNDATION OF INTELLIGENCE AND KNOWLEDGE
College of Medicine, University of North Carolina
Imagery activity may be a key to the building blocks of intelligence and education. When the brain images the brain releases endorphins and recent research has demonstrated that imagery also expands the size of the brain through the growth of new dendrites which are the branching protoplasmic processes that conduct impulses toward the body of a nerve cell. Imagery therefore speeds communication within the cells and between the cells in the brain.
Imagery building skills from oral word paintings involves a process of conscious thought that transfers to reading imagery skills. If you visualize what you hear, you facilitate the ability to visualize what you read.
WHAT WORKS ABOUT TEACHING AND LEARNING
U.S. Department of Education 1986
1. RESEARCH FINDING: “Telling young children stories motivates them to read. Storytelling also introduces children to cultural values and literacy traditions before they can read, write and talk about stories by themselves.”
COMMENT: “Elementary school teachers have found that even students with low motivation and weak academic skills are more likely to listen, read, write and work hard in the context of storytelling.”
Stories from the oral tradition celebrate heroes who struggle to overcome great obstacles that threaten to defeat them. With the help of skillful questioning, they can also learn to reflect on the personal and cultural values introduced in the story.
2. RESEARCH FINDING: “Children get more out of a reading assignment when the lesson is preceded with background information and followed with discussion.”
COMMENT: “Poor readers of every age have difficulty connecting between what they read and what they already know. Telling a story provides a road map of information ideas and characters to the listener and when coupled with a discussion of the story, the student learns that the purpose of reading is to acquire information and insight.”
3. RESEARCH FINDING: “Students read more fluently with greater understanding if they have background knowledge of the past and present. Such knowledge and understanding is cultural literacy.”
COMMENT: “Telling stories that (a) describe people, events and places; and (b) incorporate shared heritage, institutions and values can provide the cultural literacy necessary to improve reading comprehension.”
SUMMARY: “Intense exposure to stories and storytelling in the classroom stirs and develops the imagination. Learning occurs in the presence of demonstration. Learning is an interaction of concurrent events rather than a consequence of a demonstration. To learn to read and to write, people require: (1) demonstrations of how reading and writing can be used for evident meaningful purposes, (2) opportunities for engagement in such meaningful uses of reading and writing and (3) a positive environment for the process to occur.”
“Storytelling provides imagery-building skills, creates an attentive listener, expands interest into new areas, centers the attention of the class, teaches language, story plots, folkways, ethics, traditions and customs. Storytelling can supplement and enhance the existing literacy program by supporting teacher’s language arts programs.”
INCIDENTAL INFORMATION ON STORYTELLING AND LEARNING
The entertainment quality of the oral story provides not only a mechanism to transmit information to an attentive listener but also has the residual effect of improving reading motivation. Storytelling affects the listener by expanding interest into new areas.
The oral story centers the attention of the listener and this process of focusing a group’s attention spills over into other educational activities.
Storytelling conveys language and story plot structure which enhances reading comprehension.
Stories are effective alternative methods of teaching cross-cultural understanding, family and community values, writing, and speaking skills. With some creative thinking, any other area of emphasis toward attaining a school system’s academic goals can be and has been assisted through storytelling. Teachers, by using their own creativity and drawing on librarians and media specialists for curriculum resources, can develop story tools in English, history, social studies, science, math, etc.
The oral story as a traditional transmitter of folkways, ethics, traditions, and customs is an effective provider of information that impacts on behavior modification.
The entertainment value of a story is only the icing on the cake. If a teacher desires to achieve teacher-student centered attentiveness, there is a wide range of alternatives. The story can be read aloud or told. Characterization and dramatization can be added as a new dimension. The teacher may participate or listen. The students, individually or as a few in number or as a total group, may participate or listen. Varied combinations may be used to produce teacher student centered attentiveness. Tell a story that takes several sessions to complete. Be like Scheherazade, stop at an exciting point, review and continue at the next session.
The art of storytelling provides a flexible teaching tool. It is cost effective, builds imagination, provides an environment for learning, is a learning experience, and can be used with individuals or groups or with visual aids, sound effects and music; and your library already has the essential resources to start, and you and the students can become the resources for new creativity.
Storytelling may start with reading a story aloud to students, using your natural voice. Next, if you are inspired to be a proficient teller then set your goal, use positive thinking, go and listen to tellers, attend storytelling workshops, tell stories at every opportunity and begin to build your craftsmanship.
Storytelling improves listening comprehension, a vital pre-reading skill for children, introduces us to literature we may not be familiar with, whets our appetite for further literary experiences, introduces us to characters with whom we can relate, has been the best tool for passing on the values and morals of families and peoples for centuries, increases our understanding and awareness of our world’s diverse cultures, develops mental imaging ability, another skill necessary for reading comprehension.
Susanna Holstein, Librarian and Storyteller, USA
Effects of Storytelling in Education – research
“Storytelling and Story Reading: A Comparison of Effects on Children’s Memory and Story Comprehension”: A thesis presented to the faculty of the department of Curriculum and Instruction East Tennessee State University by Matthew P. Gallets, May, 2005 (ETSU is the only university in the United States that offers a master’s degree in storytelling.)
“The population studied consisted of kindergarten, first, and second grade students. Half the students were read stories aloud, the other half were told the same stories by a storyteller. Students in both the reading and storytelling groups improved on most measures. However, on some measures, notably those regarding recall ability, students in the storytelling group improved more than students in the reading group.”
“The Effects of Storytelling versus Story Reading on Comprehension and Vocabulary Knowledge of British Primary School Children”: Reading Improvement; v35 n3 p127-36 Fall 1998, by Susan Trostle and Sandy Jean Hicks
“This article compares effects of storytelling versus story reading on comprehension and vocabulary development of 32 British primary children. States one group listened to stories in storytelling style, the other group listened to stories read by a student teacher. Finds children who witnessed storytelling scored higher on comprehension/vocabulary measures than did children who listened to story reading.”
“Reading, Writing, and Storytelling: A Bridge from the Middle School to the Preschool”, by Joseph Sanacore and Al Alio, 2007 (no publication source given)
Students aged 11-14 at Hauppauge Middle School (Long Island, New York) write original stories, learn storytelling techniques, and then tell their stories to preschool children.
“Findings show that most of the preschool children read more books, select a wide variety of materials, maintain a desire to read, and tell their own stories. The middle school students increase their sensitivity for communicating with a unique audience and they report an improved awareness of children’s ability to use and appreciate language.”
“The Effects of Storytelling Experiences on Vocabulary Skills of Second Grade Students”: A research paper presented to the faculty of the Library Science Department, University of Northern Iowa, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Gail Froyen 1987.
“Second grade students at Lowell School, Waterloo, Iowa, were taught storytelling techniques and given opportunities to practice these techniques for 35-40 minutes per week for six months. This activity, held during lunch, was self-selected and conducted in small groups (8-9 students in each group, with 43 students total). …
After six months, these students significantly increased their performance on vocabulary and reading comprehension tests beyond what was expected for that six month period, as measured by pre- and post- Iowa Tests of Basic Skills.”
“Children’s hunger for stories is constant. Every time they enter your classroom, they enter with a need for stories.” … When children create and tell a story in their own or a second language, the language becomes theirs.
Wright, A. Storytelling with children. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Oral language is an important tool for the cognitive growth of young children.
Van Groenou, M. “Tell me a story”: Using children’s oral culture in a preschool setting. Montessori LIFE 1995, Summer.
Critical thinking skills, vocabulary, and language patterns are enhanced through use of stories.
Zabel, M. K. Storytelling, myths, and folk tales: Strategies for multicultural inclusion. Preventing School Failure, 32, 1991, Fall.
Oral and literate are not opposites; rather, the development of orality is the necessary foundation for the later development of literacy…. Indeed, a sensitive program of instruction will use the child’s oral cultural capacities to make reading and writing engaging and meaningful.
Egan, K., Literacy and the oral foundation of education, The NAMTA Journal, 18, 1993, Winter 11-46.
One area reading researchers agree on is that oral-language competencies are essential in literacy development. Storytelling requires listening and visualization-key oral-language and comprehension competencies and strategies. It also provides vocabulary development, in context. Talking with children and encouraging talk among children is another facet of oral-language; storytelling stimulates both. The personal nature of the transaction between the storyteller and story-listener encourages the active construction of meaning. …
The importance of fostering motivation for reading and learning cannot be underestimated. Skills and worksheet-driven classrooms cannot teach or motivate, as storytelling can, the love of language, stories, characters, and ideas. Nor can they, as storytelling can, foster curiosity. …
Additionally, sharing stories from various cultures makes geographical knowledge more meaningful. Without them, names and lists of countries may be memorized for test-taking purposes, then quickly forgotten. When connected to story, geographical locations and characteristics are more apt to be remembered.
Jane M. Gangi, an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT, author of Encountering Children’s Literature: An Arts Approach. Pearson (Allyn and Bacon). 2004.
Cliatt & Shaw (1988) “The relationship of storytelling and successful children’s literacy development is well established.” and “…this process (storytelling) enhanced children’s development of language and logic skills.”
Coles (1989) “Stories enhanced recall, retention, application of concepts into new situations, understanding, learner enthusiasm for the subject matter.” … “Stories enhanced and accelerated virtually every measurable aspect of learning.”
Schank (1990) “Storytelling has demonstrable, measurable, positive, and irreplaceable value in teaching.”
Snow and Burns (1998) “Recently the efficacy of early reading and storytelling exposure has been scientifically validated. It has been shown to work.”
Story Proof: the science behind the startling power of story
Kendall Haven, Libraries Unlimited, Westport CT, 2007
The book focusses on the benefits of reading and telling stories to children in the classroom, concluding that reading to children is good, but telling is better. These quotes and paraphrases are typical of the results of the 350 studies consulted by the author for the book.
p. 4. “Canadian researchers found a strong positive correlation between early storytelling activity and later math abilities. … 350 studies from fifteen separate fields of science … agree that stories are an effective and efficient vehicle for teaching, for motivating, and for the general communication of factual information, concepts, and tacit information.”
p. 67. “Information is remembered better and longer, and recalled more readily and accurately when it is remembered within the context of a story.”
p. 86. An 8-year period of telling stories to kindergarten through fifth grade (class) in New Jersey, a one-hour session once a week or once a month, resulted in 1000 teacher feedback reports agreeing that the programme “had a major and lasting impact on student behavior and language arts achievement”.
p. 90. A 1999 study showed that “telling stories to primary-grade students improved their vocabulary faster than did reading to them but that both oral activities significantly improved student reading comprehension.”
p. 98. Based on classroom experiences of tens of thousands of teachers, the National Council of Teachers of English Committee on Storytelling concluded in a 1992 report:
“Story is the best vehicle for passing on factual information. Historical figures and events linger in children’s minds when communicated by way of a narrative. The ways of other cultures, both ancient and living, acquire honor in story. The facts about now plants and animals develop, how numbers work, or how government policy influences history – any topic for that matter – can be incorporated into story form and made more memorable.” [See full NCTE statement below.]
p. 101. “Once we recognize story structure as a prominent feature of human understanding, then we are led to reconceive the curriculum as the set of great stories we have to tell children and recognize elementary school teachers as the storytellers of our culture.” K. Egan, The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape Our Understanding, University of Chicago Press, 1997.
p. 104. “… children process the world in story terms, using story as a structure within which to create meaning and understanding.”
p. 121. “Storytelling creates excitement, enthusiasm, and more detailed and expansive images in the mind of the listener than does the same story delivered in other ways.”
A Position Statement from the Committee on Storytelling, 1992
National Council of Teachers of English
Once upon a time, oral storytelling ruled. It was the medium through which people learned their history, settled their arguments, and came to make sense of the phenomena of their world. Then along came the written word with its mysterious symbols. For a while, only the rich and privileged had access to its wonders. But in time, books, signs, pamphlets, memos, cereal boxes, constitutions–countless kinds of writing appeared everywhere people turned. The ability to read and write now ruled many lands. Oral storytelling, like the simpleminded youngest brother in the olden tales, was foolishly cast aside. Oh, in casual ways people continued to tell each other stories at bedtime, across dinner tables, and around campfires, but the respect for storytelling as a tool of learning was almost forgotten.
Luckily, a few wise librarians, camp counselors, folklorists, and traditional tellers from cultures which still highly valued the oral tale kept storytelling alive. Schoolchildren at the feet of a storyteller sat mesmerized and remembered the stories till the teller came again. Teachers discovered that children could easily recall whatever historical or scientific facts they learned through story. Children realized they made pictures in their minds as they heard stories told, and they kept making pictures even as they read silently to themselves. Just hearing stories made children want to tell and write their own tales. Parents who wanted their children to have a sense of history found eager ears for the kind of story that begins, “When I was little ….” Stories, told simply from mouth to ear, once again traveled the land.
What Is Storytelling?
Storytelling is relating a tale to one or more listeners through voice and gesture. It is not the same as reading a story aloud or reciting a piece from memory or acting out a drama–though it shares common characteristics with these arts. The storyteller looks into the eyes of the audience and together they compose the tale. The storyteller begins to see and re-create, through voice and gesture, a series of mental images; the audience, from the first moment of listening, squints, stares, smiles, leans forward or falls asleep, letting the teller know whether to slow down, speed up, elaborate, or just finish. Each listener, as well as each teller, actually composes a unique set of story images derived from meanings associated with words, gestures, and sounds. The experience can be profound, exercising the thinking and touching the emotions of both teller and listener.
Why Include Storytelling in School?
Everyone who can speak can tell stories. We tell them informally as we relate the mishaps and wonders of our day-to-day lives. We gesture, exaggerate our voices, pause for effect. Listeners lean in and compose the scene of our tale in their minds. Often they are likely to be reminded of a similar tale from their own lives. These naturally learned oral skills can be used and built on in our classrooms in many ways.
Students who search their memories for details about an event as they are telling it orally will later find those details easier to capture in writing. Writing theorists value the rehearsal, or prewriting, stage of composing. Sitting in a circle and swapping personal or fictional tales is one of the best ways to help writers rehearse.
Listeners encounter both familiar and new language patterns through story. They learn new words or new contexts for already familiar words. Those who regularly hear stories, subconsciously acquire familiarity with narrative patterns and begin to predict upcoming events. Both beginning and experienced readers call on their understanding of patterns as they tackle unfamiliar texts. Then they re-create those patterns in both oral and written compositions. Learners who regularly tell stories become aware of how an audience affects a telling, and they carry that awareness into their writing.
Both tellers and listeners find a reflection of themselves in stories. Through the language of symbol, children and adults can act out through a story the fears and understandings not so easily expressed in everyday talk. Story characters represent the best and worst in humans. By exploring story territory orally, we explore ourselves–whether it be through ancient myths and folktales, literary short stories, modern picture books, or poems. Teachers who value a personal understanding of their students can learn much by noting what story a child chooses to tell and how that story is uniquely composed in the telling. Through this same process, teachers can learn a great deal about themselves.
Story is the best vehicle for passing on factual information. Historical figures and events linger in children’s minds when communicated by way of a narrative. The ways of other cultures, both ancient and living, acquire honor in story. The facts about how plants and animals develop, how numbers work, or how government policy influences history–any topic, for that matter–can be incorporated into story form and made more memorable if the listener takes the story to heart.
Children at any level of schooling who do not feel as competent as their peers in reading or writing are often masterful at storytelling. The comfort zone of the oral tale can be the path by which they reach the written one. Tellers who become very familiar with even one tale by retelling it often, learn that literature carries new meaning with each new encounter. Students working in pairs or in small storytelling groups learn to negotiate the meaning of a tale.
How Do You Include Storytelling in School?
Teachers who tell personal stories about their past or present lives model for students the way to recall sensory detail. Listeners can relate the most vivid images from the stories they have heard or tell back a memory the story evokes in them. They can be instructed to observe the natural storytelling taking place around them each day, noting how people use gesture and facial expression, body language, and variety in tone of voice to get the story across.
Stories can also be rehearsed. Again, the teacher’s modeling of a prepared telling can introduce students to the techniques of eye contact, dramatic placement of a character within a scene, use of character voices, and more. If students spend time rehearsing a story, they become comfortable using a variety of techniques. However, it is important to remember that storytelling is communication, from the teller to the audience, not just acting or performing.
Storytellers can draft a story the same way writers draft. Audiotape or videotape recordings can offer the storyteller a chance to be reflective about the process of telling. Listeners can give feedback about where the telling engaged them most. Learning logs kept through- out a storytelling unit allow both teacher and students to write about the thinking that goes into choosing a story, mapping its scenes, coming to know its characters, deciding on detail to include or exclude.
Like writers, student storytellers learn from models. Teachers who tell personal stories or go through the process of learning to tell folk or literary tales make the most credible models. Visiting storytellers or professional tellers on audiotapes or videotapes offer students a variety of styles. Often a community historian or folklorist has a repertoire of local tales. Older students both learn and teach when they take their tales to younger audiences or community agencies. Once you get storytelling going, there is no telling where it will take you.
Oral storytelling is regaining its position of respect in communities where hundreds of people of every age gather together for festivals in celebration of its power. Schools and preservice college courses are gradually giving it curriculum space as well. It is unsurpassed as a tool for learning about ourselves, about the ever-increasing information available to us, and about the thoughts and feelings of others.
The simpleminded youngest brother in olden tales, while disregarded for a while, won the treasure in the end every time. The NCTE Committee on Storytelling invites you to reach for a treasure–the riches of storytelling.
This position statement may be printed, copied, and disseminated without permission from NCTE.
Single copies of this statement are available free upon request, and may be copied without permission from NCTE. Multiple copies are available at a bulk rate of U.S. $7 per 100 prepaid only. Stock #52945. Send request to NCTE Order Department, 1111 W. Kenyon Road, Urbana, IL 61801-1096.
Storytellers’ Anecdotal Evidence
After the show was over one of the mothers stopped to speak with me. Her son was one of my [intermediate school workshop] tellers three years ago. At the time, he struggled with his reading skills and was receiving extra help. He was a bit shy, not very confident, but he took a leap of faith and joined the storytelling club. He wasn’t the most talented teller but what he lacked in raw talent he made up in effort and enthusiasm. At the Storytelling Festival that year his mother came up to me with tears in her eyes, clutching the folktale book with the story he had just shared on stage. She couldn’t believe the transformation in her child, how storytelling had made such a difference in his confidence level and in his life.
Tonight, again with tears in her eyes, she recalled that evening and told me that he is now a straight A student and loves to read. She urged me to never stop what I was doing and said that I had changed his life. Of course I know it wasn’t me, it was the power of story, but it did my heart so much good to hear how well that kind and gentle boy is faring in his new school …
Karen Chace, storyteller from East Freetown, Masschusetts USA
Storytell email list 29/10/05
As an old classroom teacher, I often found that storytelling was one of the best anchors for helping my kids with processing disorders to focus, to gain understanding of content and to then be able to synthesize and dialogue about the stories, their implications, their connections to other learning. By far, the most powerful teaching strategy that I’ve known has been storytelling. My mom (1918-2010) had learning disabilities that were largely undiagnosed, given the times that she was a student (1920’s to 1930’s). But she stayed glued to stories and could tell them with rich skill.
I volunteer in a local Waldorf School 3rd grade class. There are 3 kids in the class who have various forms of dyslexia. As a retired elementary school teacher, I’ve offered to help the classroom teacher with some of the diagnostic stuff with these kids and to use strategies that I think will help strengthen their reading. I always tell a story or two when I visit the class. All three of these kids had incredible recall and the ability to connect one story to another, seeing similarities.
B.Z. Smith, storyteller, Sonora, California
One more voice for the power of storytelling to reach students identified with various learning challenges. Liz and I are back at the pueblo school where we’ve been doing residencies for almost 10 years now. This year the terms of the contract are a little different and we are mainly working with kids with various challenges that cause them to struggle with reading, writing, comprehension, etc. Not surprisingly, because we’ve seen this again and again… most of these kids “take” to stories and often astonish their teachers with their recall, ability to remember, or retell stories… we’ve got students who haven’t heard a story in a year or more… stories we’ve forgotten we even know, that they can tell. It’s probably pretty obvious and we certainly don’t have any research to back it up… but one factor undoubtedly is that hearing and working with stories is inherently fun… whereas “language arts” for those who struggle to read, write etc, is inherently stressful. Imagine that…some kids learn better when they are having fun.
Bob Kanegis, storyteller, United States
As a storyteller with dyslexia and dyscalculia, I can assure you that storytelling is key to a positive learning experience. While most of us with these issues seem to be reasonably intelligent, in the past we were often shunted into situations – well-meant, where our needs could not be adequately addressed. Because of this, I applaud the storytelling approach in the classroom as it is inclusive. Oral storytelling releases something essential, allowing us to embrace meaning, color, expression and imagination; it is liberating for those of us marching to a different beat.
When one is purely wired for learning through story, the classroom with all its confusing stimuli can be an intimidating experience. Storytelling’s one-on-one transmission can be miraculous, calming all the jangled nerves and allowing focus. Something literally settles as the mind automatically links into the information being provided. It is both a physical experience and an emotional one.
Growing up in the fifties when little was known about learning differences, I was labeled “retarded,” in spite of high “intelligence” scores. Not until my mid-forties did I discover what I was really dealing with – learning differences, and not until sometime later did oral tradition storytelling enter the picture. While I cannot memorize a script or anything else, I can create/learn a story and tell it in no time flat. Not only that, while television bores me to tears, listening to a storyteller is mesmerizing.
Saundra Kelley, storyteller and author, United States
Statistics provided to me privately by a storyteller conducting sessions for 10-12-year-olds at least twice a month in a town in the United States compare results of tests in reading assessments and oral fluency between groups exposed and not exposed to regular storytelling. These figures, covering the years 2011-2014, show that the story group improved by at least 50% and often more than 100% over the school year. Even more relevant is that the students this teller worked with were “the most troubled, low-achieving students in the grade level”. This small, unofficial study accurately reflects the anecdotal reports of storytellers in schools everywhere.
The 2007 compilation of information Storytelling in Schools links to many other sites, though some hyperlinks may be dead. Heather Forest’s Storytelling in the Classroom is especially practical for the teacher just embarking on the use of story. That site has a useful page called Stories in a Nutshell: Concise Folktale Plots for Student Retelling — 36 simple stories that are appropriate for young children to tell.


Visual spatial intelligence is crucial in many academic and professional fields. Despite the importance, it is rarely included in kindergarten or elementary curriculum. But we can help our children improve their visual spatial skills through simple and fun activities.
Table of Contents
Basics Of Visual Spatial Intelligence
- What Is Spatial Thinking / Spatial Intelligence?
- The Importance Of Visual Spatial Skills
- Visual Spatial Skills And Math
- Visual Spatial Skills And STEM
Characteristics Of Visual Spatial Intelligence
How To Improve Visual Spatial Intelligence
- Use Spatial Language In Everyday Interactions
- Teach Using Gestures And Encourage Kids To Gesture
- Teach Visualization
- Play The Matching Game
- Build Structures In A Storytelling Context
- Do Tangram And Non-Jigsaw Spatial Puzzles
- Expose To Map Reading
- Read Spatially Challenging Books
- Play Video Games Such As Tetris
Less Proven Activities To Increase Visual Spatial Intelligence
What Is Spatial Thinking / Spatial Intelligence?
Spatial thinking, or spatial reasoning, concerns the positions of objects, their shapes, their spatial relations to one another and the movement they make. It involves understanding and remembering the relative locations of objects in the mind. Then through imagining or visualizing, objects are manipulated through mental movement or transformation to form new spatial relations.
Visual spatial intelligence is the ability to perform spatial thinking.
Here is an example where spatial reasoning is used.
In the following prism test, can you tell when 1 is folded to form a triangular prism, which of the followings (2-5) can be produced?
To come up with the answer, you need to mentally form a picture of the prism being folded. While doing it, you need to keep track of the relative positions of the different colored sides.
Answer: 2 and 3 are both correct.
The Importance Of Visual Spatial Skills
We use visual spatial skills frequently in day-to-day functioning.
A child imagines where a toy is inside his bedroom before walking into the room to get it.
When we pack our luggage, we visualize how different items can fit together to maximize the storage capacity.
To put together an easy-to-assemble furniture, we need to match the two-dimensional diagrams to the three-dimensional furniture parts.
Visual Spatial Skills And Math
Spatial skills are particularly important to mathematics learning.
- A student creates a mental geometric object that can be measured, moved, and transformed to facilitate geometric calculation and pattern recognition.
- A mathematician uses visual spatial thinking to enhance number sense, quantity comparison, and arithmetic.
Many studies have found that high visual spatial ability is linked to better math performance.
A $1 million pilot project supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development shows how improving spatial thinking can result in better math skills.
In this project, kindergarteners and first graders were randomly assigned to two afterschool intervention groups.
In one group, children were asked to construct and copy designs made from a variety of materials such as Legos, pattern blocks and construction papers.
The control group, on the other hand, was given a non-spatial curriculum.
After about 7 months, the children in the first group made a substantial improvement in their math performance. They moved from the 30th percentile nationwide in numeracy and applied math knowledge to the 47th percentile. In the control group, no gain in math score was observed.
The most striking part of this experiment was that math was not taught at all. The instructors never specified any connections between the activities and math.
Visual Spatial Skills And STEM
Visual spatial skills are also crucial in many academic and professional fields, such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
- A geoscientist mentally manipulates the movement of tectonic planes to see the process of earth formation.
- A neurosurgeon visualizes different brain areas to predict the outcome of a surgery.
- An engineer imagines how various forces may affect the design of a structure.
Research shows that college students who score high on spatial tests tend to major in STEM disciplines and go into STEM careers.
Is Visual Spatial Intelligence Fixed Or Malleable?
People have different preferred cognitive thinking styles.
Some are verbal thinkers who think in words. They are more comfortable with semantically and acoustically complex verbal tasks. Verbalizers usually prefer written and spoken explanations over pictures and diagrams.
Others are visual thinkers who think about subject matters using visual representation. There are two types of visualizers.
- Spatial visualizers
They think in terms of schematic images, spatial relations among objects and spatial transformations. But the images they visualize lack visual details.
- Object visualizers
They think in colorful, pictorial and high-resolutions images of individual objects.
Spatial visualizers usually possess better spatial skills than object visualizers or verbalizers.
So if your child is a visual spatial learner, then he/she has a head start in spatial thinking.
However, visual spatial intelligence is not a fixed ability.
Although some people are better at spatial thinking than others, the good news is everyone can improve.
Through training and practice, spatial reasoning, and in turn mathematics and STEM learning, can be boosted.
Does Gender Matter?
Although many studies suggest that male performs better than female in spatial reasoning tasks, that doesn’t mean a boy is always better than a girl in spatial thinking.
One’s belief in themselves and in the importance of effort can make a huge difference.
A recent study in Italy illustrates the importance of belief beautifully.
In the experiment, 152 high school students were divided into three groups and each group was given different instructions on a spatial relations test.
One group was told that women performed better than men in this task while another group was told men were better and the third group was not told any gender reference.
Results showed that women in the first group scored the same as the men.
Another Italian study shows that believing in effort over innate ability can improve spatial performance, too.
In this study, 120 high school students were divided into three groups. Before given a spatial test, one group was given instructions that stressed the importance of personal effort while the other the importance of genetically driven ability. The third group was the control and was only told that the test was very important.
The group that received effort emphasis instructions outperformed the other two groups.
How a child performs in spatial reasoning tasks can be affected given a different belief.
Unfortunately, stereotypes about gender permeate our society. But as parents, we can change this misconception by believing in our girls and encouraging them to keep practicing.
Even if one starts with a lower score in spatial reasoning, they, too, can improve substantially if they keep practicing.
For low-ability students, they need to do more work to get over an initial hump. The initial improvement may be slow, but if they persevere, faster improvement will come.
So even if your child does not show big improvement right away. Keep practicing!
Researchers also find that the more a group of men and women practices spatial thinking, the smaller the gender gap is in spatial skills.
There is also a study that shows the gender gap could be the result of nurture rather than nature. In a remote community in India where women have equal or more rights than men, such gender gap in spatial reasoning skills does not exist.
So, never imply nor believe that girls are supposed to do worse in spatial reasoning, math or STEM. Girls and boys should both believe in themselves and their efforts spent in learning.
Early Spatial Skills Education
Early education plays a large role in preparing our children for later success. Preschoolers’ spatial skills can predict their future performance in math learning in middle and high school.
As children’s first teachers, parents can start teaching young children, even toddlers, the basics of spatial thinking.
It is not too early to start familiarizing your toddler, boy or girl, with spatial thinking.
Neuroscientists find that specific regions in the brain responsible for thinking about location and spatial relationships develop in very early childhood. Infants as young as 4 months have been found to demonstrate abilities related to mental rotation.
Furthermore, spatial reasoning skills are cumulative and durable.
Those who master the skills in early childhood will have more opportunities to use it to acquire and organize additional information throughout their lives. So the earlier the education, the larger and longer lasting the improvement.
How To Improve Visual Spatial Intelligence
1. Use Spatial Language In Everyday Interactions
Parents can help children improve spatial intelligence by using more spatial terms in everyday interaction.
Spatial language is a powerful spatial learning tool. Babies learn better when the spatial relations are given names. Preschoolers whose parents use more spatial words (such as triangle, big, tall or bent) perform better in spatial tests than those whose parents do not use such language.
Here are some example spatial terms that can be added to daily interactions.
|Type of Terms||Descriptions||Examples|
|Shape||Mathematical names that describe two- and three-dimensional objects and spaces.||square, circle, sphere, triangle, pentagon|
|Dimensional adjectives||Terms that describe the size of spaces, objects and people.||large, small, long, short, big, tiny, tall|
|Spatial features||Terms that describe the features and properties of two- and three-dimensional spaces, objects and people.||Straight, bent, curvy, corner, side, line, corner, pointy, sharp, edge|
|Spatial relations||Terms that describe the relative positions of space, objects and people.||inside, outside, under, around, corner, on top of, at the bottom of, in front of, behind, diagonal, across|
But don’t just speak at your child to teach spatial terms.
Ask your child to repeat the words back to you and explain what they mean.
Encourage your child to use those terms, too.
Kids who can use more spatial terms are found to perform better in spatial reasoning tasks.
You can help them make the connections between spatial relations and objects around them.
“Is the candy inside or outside of the glass?”
“Do you think the toy is under or behind the couch?”
“I see Lily across the street!”
2. Teach Using Gestures And Encourage Kids To Gesture
Gesture is a powerful communicating and teaching tool. Researches show that children often learn better when gestures are used by teachers than when speech is used alone. Gesture is also closely linked to spatial thinking. It promotes a focus on spatial information in speech.
Not only does gesture enhance the learning of spatial relations, it also plays an important role in exercising spatial reasoning.
A study has found that when children use gesturing to indicate movements of objects, their spatial reasoning ability improves. This improvement is also detected in children who do not spontaneously gesture but do so after being prompted to.
3. Teach Visualization
Visualization is using visual imagery to mentally represent an object not physically present. It is a powerful skill in spatial reasoning and problem solving.
Young children can be taught to use visualization to enhance their spatial thinking.
For example, young children often have “gravity bias”. In an experiment, when a ball drops, preschoolers tend to think that it will appear directly below, even if the ball drops down a twisted tube. But when they are instructed to visualize the path of the ball before answering, more kids got the right answer.
4. Play The Matching Game
Play the construction matching game.
Start by putting together a simple structure using building blocks and then ask the kids to match it in shape and in colors.
You can also have one child build the structure while another copy.
As they become more familiar with building and more confident in matching, increase the complexity of the structures.
(Disclosure: I get a small commission for purchases made through the links below.)
5. Build Structures In A Storytelling Context
Playing with building objects such as Lego and wooden blocks can substantially increase a child’s spatial thinking ability.
But you don’t need perfectly crafted toys. Even a few cereal boxes or toilet paper rolls can be used to stack and build interesting structures.
Give them a problem to solve. A study show that when block building activities are carried out in a storytelling context, children’s spatial thinking improves more.
“Oh, those are beautiful toy cars. Imagine you are the proud owner of these two cars. Can you build a garage that can fit them both in nicely by the house you just built?”
When they have completed the construction, ask them to walk around or rotate the structure to see it from different angles.
Another reason why block play can promote spatial thinking is that both children and parents tend to use more spatial language when playing with blocks.
6. Do Tangram And Non-Jigsaw Spatial Puzzles
Tangram is an ancient Chinese puzzles consisting of 7 pieces. The pieces can be rearranged into many different shapes such as animals, people or objects. It is a teaching tool that has been proven to increase students’ spatial ability.
Jigsaw puzzle has been recommended by many sources to help increase children’s spatial ability. It is probably because a study finds that preschoolers who play puzzles perform better in a mental transformation spatial task than those who don’t. It also finds that the more frequently the child plays, they better they perform.
No doubt, there is a strong association between puzzle solving and spatial intelligence. However, no controlled studies have been found to establish a causal relationship between them.
The problem with jigsaw puzzles is that, unlike tangram, there is only one fixed way to fit the pieces together. A study has found that preschoolers who have played with a single-solution puzzle are less innovative and flexible in subsequent problem solving than children who have played with a multiple-solution block set.
It appears that singe-solution puzzles are inferior toys to multiple-solution puzzles when it comes to kids’ creativity.
Therefore, until there is research that proves the values of single-solution puzzles, I recommend using multiple-solution puzzles, such as tangram, over jigsaw puzzles to help children improve their spatial skills.
7. Expose To Map Reading
Map reading can help children acquire abstract concepts of space and the ability to think systematically about spatial relations that are not otherwise experienced directly in the physical world.
Maps present spatial information that differs from direct experience navigating the world. Children learn to think about multiple large-scale spatial relations among different locations in a concrete way.
8. Read Spatially Challenging Books
Books such as Zoom and Re-Zoom are great picture books that can draw children into a world of visualization and spatial thinking. The increasing level of details helps illustrate the different spatial relations among objects.
When reading these books with the kids, parent can enhance the spatial learning by verbal explanation and gestures. Research shows that such support from parents is linked to children’s higher spatial scores.
9. Play Video Games Such As Tetris
Playing spatial video games such as Marble Madness or Tetris, have shown to be beneficial to children’s spatial intelligence. The improvement is more pronounced in low-ability kids.
More Activities To Increase Visual Spatial Intelligence
If you are looking for more activities to increase your child’s (or your own) visual spatial intelligence, the following are less proven but still valid (and fun) ways to do so.
Visual perspective taking is the ability to imagine how things look like from another viewpoint different from one’s own. Taking photos of objects at different angles can enhance children’s ability to take on different visual perspectives and recognize changes in scale.
Practice Paper Folding (Origami)
Mental paper folding has long been used to increase mental rotational ability.
Although no research is found to link physical paper folding to spatial intelligence, it is not farfetched to believe that physical paper folding practice can enhance mental paper folding ability.
Learn To Play Music
Several researches have found that learning to make music can raise spatial-temporal ability.
Spatial-temporal reasoning is the ability to think of spatial relations that change through time. This skill allows you to mentally pack your luggage one item after another to see how to fit the most items.
Notice that this is different from the controversial “Mozart Effect” theory that claims listening to music can enhance a variety of skills including spatial reasoning.
A meta-analytic review of 553 studies supports the theory that music instruction, rather than music listening, can enhance spatial skills.
Here are more spatial relations activities for preschoolers.
References – Spatial Intelligence
- More Evidence for Three Types of Cognitive Style: Validating the Object-Spatial Imagery and Verbal Questionnaire Using Eye Tracking when Learning with Texts and Pictures. By Tim N. Hoffler, Marta Koc-Janucht and Detlev Leutner http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.3300/pdf
- Understanding kindergarten teachers’ perspectives of teaching basic geometric shapes: a phenomenographic research. By Hatice Zeynep Inan, Ozlem Dogan-Temur http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11858-010-0241-1
- The coding of spatial location in young children. By Huttenlocher J, Newcombe N, Sandberg EH. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7956105
- Geometric and Spatial Thinking in Young Children. By DH Clements http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED436232.pdf
- Daniel l. shea, David lubinski, and Camilla P. benbow, “importance of assessing spatial ability in intellectually talented young adolescents: a 20-year longitudinal study,” Journal of Educational Psychology 93, no. 3 (2001): 604–614.
- Charles H. Wolfgang, laura l. stannard, and ithel Jones, “advanced Constructional Play with leGos among Preschoolers as a Predictor of later school achievement in mathematics,” Early Child Development and Care 173, no. 5 (2003): 467–475.
- Children’s Spatial Skills Seen as Key to Math Learning. By Sarah D. Sparks http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/05/15/31learning.h32.html
- Are males always better than females in mental rotation? Exploring a gender belief explanation. By Angelica Moe
- Beyond genetics in Mental Rotation Test performance The power of effort attribution. By Angelica Moè, Francesca Pazzaglia https://www.gwern.net/docs/dnb/2010-moe.pdf
- Picture This Increasing Math and Science Learning by Improving Spatial Thinking http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ889152.pdf
- Durable and Generalized Effects of Spatial Experience on Mental Rotation: Gender Differences in Growth Patterns. By MELISSA S. TERLECKI, NORA S. NEWCOMBE and MICHELLE LITTLE. http://spatiallearning.org/publications_pdfs/terlecki_newcombe_2008.pdf
- A Developmental Look at a Rigorous Block Play Program http://www.naeyc.org/yc/files/yc/file/201503/YC0315_Tepylo.pdf
- Spatial Thinking by Young Children: Neurologic Evidence for Early Development and “Educability”. By Philip J. Gersmehl and Carol A. Gersmehl http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/courses/geog702/articles/spatial_educability.pdf
- Differential Rooting Response by Neonates: Evidence for an Early Sense of Self. By Philippe Rochat and Susan J. Hespos http://www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/rochat/Differential%20rooting.pdf
- Dynamic metal representation in infancy. By Susan Hespos, Philippe Rochat http://www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/rochat/lab/DynamicMentalRepresentationinInfacy.pdf
- The Development of Infants’ Spatial Categories. By Marianella Casasola
- Environmental input and cognitive growth: a study using time-period comparisons. By Huttenlocher J, Levine S, Vevea J.
- Children’s spatial thinking: does talk about the spatial world matter? By Shannon M. Pruden, Susan C. Levine, Janellen Huttenlocher https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372906/
- Building Foundations for Spatial Literacy in Early Childhood. By Susan L. Golbeck
- Children learn When their teacher’s Gestures and speech Differ. By Melissa a. Singer and Susan Goldin-Meadow
- Imagining a Way Out of the Gravity Bias: Preschoolers Can Visualize the Solution to a Spatial Problem. By Amy S. Joh, Vikram K. Jaswal, and Rachel Keen https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3089714/
- Early puzzle play: A predictor of preschoolers’ spatial transformation skill. By Levine, S. C., Ratliff, K. R., Huttenlocher, J., & Cannon, J. (2012). Developmental Psychology, 48(2), 530-542. http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-24641-001
- Nurture affects gender differences in spatial abilities. By Moshe Hoffman, Uri Gneezy, and John A. List
- Parental Guidance in Preschoolers’ Understanding of Spatial-Graphic Representations. By Lisa E. Szechter, Lynn S. Liben
- Block Talk: Spatial Language During Block Play. By Katrina Ferrara, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Nora S. Newcombe, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, Wendy Shallcross Lam
- Using tangrams to teach geometry to young children. By
- The Impact of Using Synchronous Collaborative Virtual Tangram in Children’s Geometric. By Lin, Chiu-Pin; Shao, Yin-juan; Wong, Lung-Hsiang; Li, Yin-Jen; Niramitranon, Jitti
- The Effects of Play on Convergent and Divergent Problem Solving. By Debra J. Pepler and Hildy S. Ross
- Effect of video game practice on spatial skills in girls and boys. By KaveriSubrahmanyam, Patricia M.Greenfield
- Perspective-taking vs. mental rotation transformations and how they predict spatial navigation performance. By Maria Kozhevnikov, Michael A. Motes, Bjoern Rasch, Olessia Blajenkova
- A social science of the arts: an emerging organizational initiative and an illustrative investigation of photography. By Lynn s. Liben and Lisa e. Szechter
- Training Generalized Spatial Skills. By Rebecca Wright, William l. Thompson, Giorgio Ganis, Nora s. Newcombe, and Stephen m. Kosslyn
- Learning to Make Music Enhances Spatial Reasoning. By Lois Hetland