The Queen's Gambit and spatial visualization

When we were children and did not have toys to play with, imagination took center stage. We indeed need to touch, explore and look, but when this resource is not available, the mind leads us to experience it through illusion.

In the popular Netflix series The Queen's Gambit, protagonist Beth Harmon uses this generous resource of her imagination to play chess in the absence of aboard. Much has been argued about the effect that the ingestion of sedatives may have had on the child's imagination. Some claim that it is a pill widely used in the 50s and 60s, the benzodiazepine, whose effects include drowsiness, sedation, ataxia, dysarthria, muscular asthenia, amnesia, vertigo, upset stomach, the blurred vision among other consequences that nothing tells us from this. great mental representation.

And we see then, how at the end of the series, Beth manages to visualize the board without having consumed the green pill.

We can then deduce that Beth possessed a capacity known as spatial intelligence, by which a person visualizes ideas or mental images from different angles. He can think in three dimensions and understand the shape of figures or space.

The most interesting thing about all this is that if we ask ourselves, how can spatial intelligence be developed? Well, it turns out that we can train and improve with practice.

And some activities are directly related to the development of this skill, and of course, chess is one of the most suitable. We constantly visualize the board, trying to predict opposite movements. Chess players are capable of creating infinite spatial combinations in our minds, and this capacity increases as we add hours of training.

Spatial intelligence is the ability to anticipate events, to foresee the result of the movements of the pieces without moving them.

We use this resource when we play blind. Our brain undergoes spatial intelligence training every time we remember positional patterns.