Spatial reasoning is the capacity to imagine a series of moves through space inside your head before executing them. The following are examples of weak functioning of this capacity.
The person has difficulty visualizing a pathway of movements inside his head. This would result in some difficulty in finding his way through space because the person cannot work out a map inside his head of how to get from one place to another. As a result the person frequently gets lost or takes much longer to get from one place to another. In some cases the person becomes phobic and avoids going anyplace new because of a fear of getting lost. This difficulty applies even to small spaces like tracing out pathways on circuit boards.
When map reading the person has to rotate the map to orient towards the direction he is going. He cannot rotate the map inside his head.
The person does not have a map of how space works inside his head. Several people with this problem report that they cannot imagine how streets connect with one another.
The person forgets spatially where he has left objects resulting in loss of the object or spending extra time trying to find objects.
The person's workspace tends to be messy and disorganized with material stacked in various piles within line of sight. This is because the person cannot imagine how to organize his space. If he puts something away in a filing cabinet or drawer he later has trouble imagining in his head where it is.
The person has more trouble navigating in crowded space because he cannot map a plan on how to get around obstacles ahead of time.
In driving a car the person has trouble planning moves ahead of time and also has difficulty anticipating the future movements of other cars on the road.
A person with this problem is poor at imagining moves ahead in a game such as checkers or chess. They tend to react to the other person's moves as they happen rather than developing a series of planned moves.
In any sports activity requiring spatial plan movements (e.g., planning how you are going to ski from the top of the hill to the bottom, anticipating the movement of the tennis ball and planning where to place yourself on the court to hit it) the person is at a disadvantage.
There is difficulty imagining inside the head different ways to arrange furniture in a room. The person has to physically move the furniture in order to find the best arrangement.
There is difficulty in constructing geometric figures.
'Arrowsmith Program's Description of Learning Dysfunctions'
Reprinted with permission from: www.arrowsmithschool.org
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