Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality. In the international competition to produce a work force equipped to cope with accelerating rates of technological innovation, the United States is leaving hundreds of thousands of highly capable people by the wayside, perhaps even millions. “Current talent search procedures focus on the assessment of mathematical and verbal ability,” wrote David Lubinski of Vanderbilt and Harrison J. Kell, a senior researcher at the Educational Testing Service, in “Spatial Ability: A Neglected Talent in Educational and Occupational Settings.” Lubinski and Kell stress the failure of many of such searches to test for the cognitive skill known as spatial ability.