Nora Newcombe: “Spatial Thinking is crucial in STEM Education”

Professor Nora S. Newcombe, one of the world’s leading developmental psychologists and a distinguished scholar at Temple University

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Antoni Hernández-Fernández

Today we have the privilege of speaking with Professor Nora S. Newcombe, one of the world’s leading developmental psychologists and a distinguished scholar at Temple University. Her research has profoundly shaped our understanding of how children develop spatial thinking, memory, navigation, and the cognitive abilities that underpin learning across multiple domains.

Professor Newcombe’s work has shown that spatial skills are not fixed traits, but capacities that can be developed through experience and education — with important implications for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. As schools worldwide seek to prepare students for increasingly complex technological environments, her insights offer valuable evidence and guidance on how cognitive development can inform teaching practice, particularly in the sciences, the arts, and technical fields.

For many people, intelligence is associated with language or mathematics. Why should educators pay more attention to spatial intelligence?

It’s actually very clear that intelligence is composed of three domains: one is verbal, or linguistic; a second is mathematical; and a third is spatial. That third domain is different from the other two, and yet it is just as important for thinking and intellectual functioning.

You have argued that spatial thinking is fundamental not only for navigation but also for reasoning with graphs, diagrams, and scientific models. How important is spatial intelligence for learning in STEM fields?

Spatial Thinking is crucial in STEM Education. But I would caution against consider spatial intelligence as just navigation. That’s a bit different from the kind of spatial thinking that matters in science. Most of the research on science and math learning has focused on small-scale spatial skills: thinking about objects you can hold, and about how objects relate to one another within a space that, even if you can’t reach it, you can certainly see. That ability translates, once it becomes symbolic, into being able to read graphs and figures and so forth. I also think navigation makes a different kind of contribution, but there is much less research on that.

Cognitive maps and mental rotation tasks have become classic tools in cognitive psychology. What do these tasks reveal about the developing mind of a child? Can children’s scores on spatial intelligence predict their educational success?

Mental rotation is certainly one popular task, but there are many other things you can do mentally that you can also do with physical objects — you can mentally fold them, slice them, and predict what they will look like in cross-section, and so on. All of these skills are a little different, and we still don’t fully understand the extent to which they are separate or go together. Probably it’s a bit of both, as is the case with most kinds of intellectual tests.

Mental rotation is certainly one popular task, but there are many other things you can do mentally that you can also do with physical objects

But to get to the second part of your question: at this point there is a very large body of evidence that these kinds of skills are related to learning at school, to occupational choice, and to occupational success. Some of that is correlational, but quite a lot of it now comes from longitudinal studies, and quite a lot from training or intervention studies, in which researchers try to improve these skills and look at the outcomes for science and math learning. So I think there is a powerful case to be made.

If spatial skills are trainable, what are the most effective activities that schools can introduce to strengthen spatial reasoning from an early age?

This is an area of active research, but I’ll give a few guidelines. One is that activities really need to be age-appropriate — what is right for a four-year-old is not going to be right for a fourteen-year-old. They should also ideally be enjoyable: I don’t think you necessarily want to give children pages of mental rotation problems. They would probably rebel, and I’m not sure it would have much effect. So a lot of people are working on playful but still structured activities that children can do to improve these skills. I think it’s important to realize that spatial skills don’t come for free.

What about classic toys and games?

Yes — some of it is just classic toys and activities: playing with and designing model airplanes, building models of castles, doing jigsaw puzzles. Those kinds of things are great, as far as we can tell. Some of it can be quite fun. It’s a different story, though, when it comes to the more school-oriented things, like reading diagrams or graphs.

You really have to think before assuming that a particular symbol means a particular thing

So, what about diagrams and reading graphs?

I think, especially with diagrams, teachers often assume they’re just pictures — that kids already know how to ‘read’ them. But there are a lot of conventions associated with diagrams, and a lot of tips for making sense of them. One is that you have to read the text at the bottom; if you don’t, you mostly won’t understand the diagram. Another confusing thing about diagrams is that arrows can mean a lot of different things: an arrow can mean ‘this happens before this,’ or ‘this causes that,’ or it can simply be labeling something. You really have to think before assuming that a particular symbol means a particular thing. Those are just a few tips. Other researchers have written quite a lot about the full set of conventions, and some have even put together one- or two-day trainings for teachers on how to approach this, with sample lessons and so forth.

Some students seem naturally good at visualizing objects and structures, while others struggle. How much of spatial ability is innate, and how much can be developed through practice?

The question of ‘how much’ is a very common one, but it’s actually not quite the right question — it’s not really what we want to know. It comes out of genetics and behavior genetics, and it’s rooted in thinking about how your genes, and your biology more generally, set what we like to call a ‘reaction range’: basically, the lowest you can go even in a very unfavorable environment, and the highest you can go in a highly favorable one. I do think there is such a thing as a reaction range — I am never going to be a gifted opera singer, and I’m not sure I’ve made my peace with that. But within that range, we do know that you can improve a lot; you can reach the top of your own potential.

Is it true, or a myth, that there are gender differences in spatial ability?

This is a topic of perennial fascination, and there are some differences, but they are more targeted and smaller than most people think. The one sex-related difference that is fairly large is in mental rotation: men do better than women on those tests as adults, by quite a lot. But that difference doesn’t appear until well into childhood — it’s not present early, and it increases as people get older. Another thing to keep in mind is that the difference is smaller, or doesn’t exist at all, on tasks like mental folding or mental cross-sectioning. So there is a bit of a mystery here: why does this one test show this difference? We haven’t solved that, but what I want to emphasize is that it’s really quite isolated. When it comes to navigation — where we know less about the relationship to science and math learning — there are, as I said, some small differences too, but again they are quite small even in adulthood, and they are more evident in adulthood than in childhood. So I’d frame the question a little differently: yes, something is happening here, but I don’t think it’s as important as people think.

Digital technologies now allow students to interact with virtual reality, simulations, and 3D models. Do these computational tools offer unique opportunities for developing spatial intelligence or can cause cognitive offloading?

There are really two questions embedded here. One is whether these tools make effective educational or training aids, and I think the answer is yes, but only if they are carefully designed. As with diagrams, it doesn’t come for free: having a flashy animation doesn’t magically improve students’ thinking. A lot of people have done research on this, and there are actually quite a lot of tips, and even big handbooks, on how to design these kinds of displays. So if you are a chemistry teacher, or any kind of teacher, my advice would be to look for a well-vetted, reputable program to use with your students. Offloading is a different question, and it depends on the domain — say, organic chemistry versus architecture.

As with diagrams, it doesn’t come for free: having a flashy animation doesn’t magically improve students’ thinking

I’ll talk about architecture: it’s not that you can’t do it yourself, and you do have to visualize in order to be creative or inventive. But if you want to develop architectural drawings and check that they work from different vantage points, and have something to show, computer-assisted design is very valuable. It’s not that we shouldn’t use it — but it’s a tool that you need a skill to use correctly. So again, it’s a great way to offload, once you already know what you’re doing.

There is growing interest in artificial intelligence in education. If students increasingly delegate spatial tasks to AI systems, what cognitive skills might they fail to develop?

An implicit part of what I just said is that if you offload too soon in the learning process, that ultimately is not good. I think it’s the same for learning to write effective prose. We know it’s also true for navigation: when you offload too much, too early, to your GPS — and never turn it off, never use it flexibly — that reduces your navigation skills. You might say, ‘What does it matter? I always have my GPS.’ But what happens if you’re outside the range of a positioning signal, or your battery fails? There are certainly situations where it matters, and I think there are other reasons too, but I’ll just point to those.

Could there be a risk that technological assistance improves performance in the short term while weakening the underlying spatial abilities in the long term?

When you look at the history of invention, it’s great to have a compass and not have to read the stars to find your way. That doesn’t mean it isn’t still nice to know how to read the stars — what if you forget your compass? A lot of things are like that.

When you offload too much, too early, to your GPS — and never turn it off, never use it flexibly — that reduces your navigation skills

Looking ahead, what do you think is the most important message that educators still fail to appreciate about spatial intelligence and its role in human learning?

I think the most important message is to stay curious. Try to find out more, do some reading, do some experimenting — some ‘messing around,’ so to speak, in your classroom. See what you can achieve. And if I may, there is a second important message, which is to deal with both your own anxiety and your students’ anxiety. Quite a lot of people think they’re bad at this kind of skill — and some people are. I’m not saying we’re all equally good and should just feel great about ourselves. But one of the things that gets in the way of improving is feeling anxious about how bad you are at it. If you weren’t a strong reader, you might work with a tutor, or read something simpler before tackling more complex prose. You might feel a little discouraged if you feel behind, but what you should do is work hard at it — because if you can’t read in our society, you’re going to be in trouble. So it is important to work on this skill if you have difficulties with it, but feeling anxious, and therefore not doing it, is not the solution.

Finally, what about reading? Is reading related to spatial skills?

No, I think reading is something quite different. There are a few books that are very spatial, or that depend heavily on drawings or imagery, but I would say most books call on a different skill, one that is mostly verbal and communicative.

Thank you very much, Nora. It was a pleasure for the readers of Educational Evidence.

My pleasure, thank you.

Further Reading

Readers who want to follow up on the ideas raised in this interview — particularly the multidisciplinary turn in navigation and spatial-cognition research — may want to look at a recent open access Professor Newcombe’s coedited volume:

Newcombe, N. S., & Cheng, K. (Eds.). (2026). Challenges in navigation research: Mapping new directions. Springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-20563-6 (open access)

For a full list of publications and ongoing projects, visit Professor Newcombe’s page at Temple University: https://sites.temple.edu/newcombe/

Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center (SILC):  https://www.spatiallearning.org/

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons