Spatial reasoning test

Spatial reasoning is the ability to picture shapes and move them in your head: turning them, flipping them, folding a flat pattern into a box. Mental rotation, the format practised here, is the classic measure: you are shown a shape and must find the same shape turned, while ignoring options that are its mirror image.

Employers test it for engineering, architecture, aviation, manufacturing and technical roles, usually inside a broader aptitude battery. Shape questions also appear in the CCAT, in the ASVAB's Assembling Objects subtest and in many armed forces selection tests.

Every shape in this test is "handed": its mirror image is a different shape, like a left and a right glove. That gives you a quick test that does not need you to rotate the whole shape in your head.

• Find a feature you can name: the long arm, the single square that sticks out, the corner.
• Note which side the feature sits on when the long arm points up. Turn the option until its long arm points up too, and check the side again.
• Same side: a rotation. Opposite side: a mirror image, whatever angle it sits at.
• For "after a quarter turn clockwise" questions, the top row becomes the right-hand column. Track one corner square, not the whole shape.

• Choosing the option that "looks closest". A mirror image can look almost identical at a glance; check the side of one feature.
• Rotating the wrong way for clockwise and counterclockwise questions. Clockwise is the way clock hands move: top goes to the right.
• Trying to turn the whole shape at once. Track one distinctive square instead.
• Spending too long on a hard shape. Eight-square shapes take longer for everyone; guess and move on if you are stuck.