I think you are onto something quite important. There's a ton of work being done right now on the psychology and cognitive mechanisms underlying learning. Part

I think you are onto something quite important. There's a ton of work being done right now on the psychology and cognitive mechanisms underlying learning. Part of the difference, it seems to me, is not just that you encode spatial information differently - it's also that you have no option but to use your spatial memory, and it's working all the time. It gets flexed naturally in a way that the part of your brain that memorizes a formula doesn't unless you have no choice but to exercise it very frequently, or possess a truly unusual brain. Put another way - I have terrible visuospatial skills, but I still am able to navigate the world and manage fine because I have no choice. I had to learn to do visuospatial tasks in order to function, so, I can do them, and I do them constantly with low error rates. The muscle isn't naturally as strong as other peoples', but it's exercised enough to not make a functional difference. This is where the idea of "mind palaces" come from - maybe such a visualization would help you.