Spatial Reasoning
What is tested
Spatial reasoning deals with shape in two and three dimensions: rotating and reflecting shapes, nets of cubes, folding and hole-punching, cube rotation, plan and elevation views, combining shapes to make a target, and identifying a shape hidden inside a jigsaw or larger figure. You are usually told whether rotation only is allowed, or whether flipping is permitted too.
Traps
- Rotating when the question allows only reflection, or the reverse.
- Forgetting that turning a cube in three dimensions moves faces out of the plane, not just around it.
- Net questions: opposite faces on a cube net never touch; they are separated by exactly one face in the same row or column.
- Hole-punching: the holes appear mirrored through the fold line each time paper is unfolded.
- Choosing a shape that is the right outline but the wrong way round.
Rule of thumb
Pick one identifying feature - a corner, a letter, a coloured square - and follow it step by step through the transformation. If you can track one feature reliably, the distractors fall away quickly.
Worked example
A cube net is drawn as a cross of six squares: a middle column of four with one square on each side. Name the face opposite the top of the column. Moving down the column, the second square is adjacent to the first, so the third square is opposite the first. Counting two steps down the column gives the face opposite the top square - opposite faces are always two apart along a straight line of the net.