From Imagination to Abstract Analysis: How Natural Language Enhances Spatial Intelligence Through Enhancing Abstract Reasoning and Spatial Rotational Ability

Abstract

Spatial intelligence is traditionally conceptualized within the IQ framework as innate and unaffected by experiential factors; it encompasses two primary faculties: abstract reasoning and spatial rotational ability. Contemporary evidence challenges this notion, positing that language, an acquired experiential factor, coherently and systematically augments these two capabilities. Specifically, language encoding and verbalization shift abstract reasoning from a primarily habitual process to a state that is distinctly more abstract and analytical. In parallel, relational language descriptors (e.g., above, below) aid in transitioning spatial rotational ability from a primarily imaginative domain to an abstract, analytical one. While previous studies have shown languages influence on discrete faculties in spatial intelligence separately, a comprehensive understanding of its systematic enhancement remains elusive. This paper attempts to bridge this gap, proposing that IQ determinants are not innate. Moreover, this paper shows that language uniformly and methodically enhances all facets of spatial intelligence through the same medium (transformation to an abstract-analytical task space) and that this task space proves more productive than its imaginative or habitual counterparts.