IQ and gifted tests

Spatial Test Battery

CTY's Spatial Test Battery (STB)

The Spatial Test Battery is a test of spatial thinking that the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth gives from Grade 5, beside its verbal and math tests, to find students for its science and engineering courses. It is not given by a psychologist, but it is often listed with these tests because a family arranges it on its own.

Each part is timed, the questions get harder as they go, and once a part is finished it cannot be reopened. One part asks the student to learn a set of shapes, then recall them after a break.

Ages
Grade 5 and up
How it is given
Online, on a computer, through the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth
How long
Each part is timed on its own, with a break before the memory recall

Practice for this kind of question

Spatial reasoning practice

Our spatial reasoning practice follows this test's parts and their times: surface development, block rotation, perspectives from Grade 7, and visual memory with a break between learning and recall. Every question is our own.

What it measures

  • Surface development: matching the edges of a flat shape to the solid it folds into
  • Block rotation: spotting the same block turned a different way
  • Visual memory: learning shapes and recognizing them later
  • Perspectives (Grade 7 and up): working out where a picture was taken from

What you can do

  • This is a format worth knowing before test day: the first fold-the-net question is the hardest one to make sense of.
  • Build with cubes and fold paper nets into boxes, then unfold them again.
  • Practice under the real part times once the format feels familiar.

More practice for the same skills

None of these is the Spatial Test Battery. Each one builds a general skill it draws on, in a short, friendly format your child can try at home.

Practice the skills, not the test

These tests are given in person by a trained examiner, and their questions are kept private: publishers do not sell them to families, and nobody can lawfully offer the real items. Nothing on this site is taken from them.

Drilling a child on copies of the questions would not help either. A result is only meaningful if the questions are new to your child, so a rehearsed score can place them in a program that does not fit, and a psychologist may set it aside.

Other tests

Test names belong to their publishers and to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. Scholar Tests is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them, and nothing on these pages is taken from a test. Ages and times are the publishers' published ranges; editions change, so check the details with the person giving the test.