Spatial reasoning practice
A spatial item asks you to move an object in your head and report what you would see. The objects are simple; doing it accurately, repeatedly, against a clock is not. The questions here are built around a procedure — pick one anchor feature and track it — rather than around visual talent.
20 questions · 12 minutes · first set free, no signup
What the questions look like
Two kinds of question. A solid or a flat net is shown and four candidates are offered: which one is the same object seen from somewhere else, or the cube this net folds into. Or no stimulus is shown at all and the four options are the question, one of which does not belong with the rest. Distractors are usually reflections, or rotations in the wrong direction.
What the bank covers
410 questions written for this site and its sister sites, grouped into 4 areas. Each drill is 10 questions from one area, untimed, with the answer explained after every question.
Mirror image or rotation
Telling a reflected shape from a turned one. No amount of turning maps a shape onto its own mirror image.
172 questions
One block out of place
Every part of the shape agrees except one block, which has moved. Holding the shape steady is most of the work.
38 questions
Which faces can be seen together
A flat net folds into a cube. Ruling out the cubes that show two marks the fold puts on opposite faces.
125 questions
Corners that run the wrong way
Three marks that really do meet at one corner, but running round it in the wrong order: the mirror of the cube the net makes.
75 questions
Where you will meet this format
SHL-style and Saville-style batteries include dedicated spatial formats, Pearson TalentLens-style batteries include space-relations items, and Criteria-style mixed aptitude tests put spatial items inside a fast general test. Saville-style technical batteries pair spatial with diagrammatic and mechanical reasoning, which is why the two practice sets here sit beside each other.
This site is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to SHL, Saville Assessment, Pearson TalentLens or Criteria Corp. Those names are used only to describe the style of question you may be sent. All trademarks belong to their owners.
What this practice does not reproduce
- No publisher's item count or time limit. The timed set here is our own envelope.
- No block counting and no hidden-face counting. Those appear in some published spatial tests and are not in this bank.
- No score conversion. Nothing here converts to a provider's scale, a percentile or an IQ.
Where these questions come from
The questions are original, written and reviewed in our own question bank and served from a local copy of 2 approved releases. They are not taken from any publisher’s test, and no published test’s items appear anywhere on this site.