Spatial thinking is not the same thing as visual thinking. This is new knowledge to me. I made the same common mistake that probably a lot of people do; probably for the same reasons too (poor sources of information).
I thought it was strange I could learn best by the tactile/kinesthetic way of acquiring knowledge, but yet I could excel as a spatial learner?! What the? I never questioned it because I had nothing to compare this with. That is until today!
An autistic woman by the name of Amanda M. Baggs wrote a brilliant article describing what a spatial thinker is. It was the first time I came across something describing so clearly how the mind of a spatial thinker works! I won’t say I think exactly the same way Amanda Baggs thinks [I'm not her], but I can say she provides an excellent general description of how I know my mind works.
In her article, Amanda states, “I can, because of this, go almost anywhere and be able to find my way back.” Now that is something I can totally relate to! It makes me wonder if animals are also spatial learners, especially those which can always find there way back home.
I’m surprised that books are allowed to be published by people with a Ph.D. which bring confusion to learning styles. There is one I have that specifically says on it’s front cover, after the main title, “The Visual-Spatial Learner.” That’s only one category of spatial learners. It’s missing these two others: “The Audio-Spatial Learner” and “The Tactile/Kinesthetic-Spatial Learner.”
On a positive note, I must say Ph.D.ers can contribute a lot of information that otherwise might not be known about (due to their abundant supply of subjects to observe). But problems always come about when people forget that no one can know about a particular topic better than those people who live it.
Here is more about Amanda Baggs from a CNN transcript. There are videos of her too online and maybe even more articles, but this ought to be enough to wet your appetite if your curious.
