The Paradigm Shift for Big Picture Thinking

What is 'big picture' thinking? Business consultant Andrew Sobel described it as:

1. Having a simple framework
2. Using analogies and metaphors
3. Developing multiple perspectives
4. Looking for patterns and commonalities

Big picture thinking is usually lauded in the world of corporate leadership, but it doesn't cut the mustard in most K-12 classrooms. What makes a good grown-up leader and innovator, doesn't make an ideal student let's face it. But maybe we need a paradigm shift.

Instead of training for compliance, careful rule-following, and exact memorization or a paragon of crystallized intelligence, we need to make more room for 'big picture' thinkers - while still recognizing the need for basic skills and knowledge.

Pint-sized big picture thinkers really do exist and they seem to be over-represented among gifted children who underperform or cause behavioral disruptions in their early elementary school years. Many of these kids are 'high conceptual' thinkers, those who like discovering novel subjects, themes, and things that don't make sense("The thing that doesn't fit is the interesting thing" - Richard Feynman), but the reason for this is often not random - inductive learners (learners who derive rules from examples) use novelties to generate new hypotheses or new rules.

If you really want to teach and interest big picture thinkers, you would expose them to rich multisensory and chronologically-advanced experiences. Look for subjects, phenomena and ideas that could be compared and contrasted. Complexity should be embraced and not shunned. For big picture thinkers - complex is simple and simple is complex. Complexity often brings more meaning because there are enough examples that one can make a pattern.

Big picture thinking really is a sort of upside-down thinking style, but if it is truly understood, it has many ramifications for education. Many big picture thinker struggle with time management problems and underachievement (poor written output) in their school years. When we ask many of these kids why it is hard for them to start writing, it becomes clear that the problem is more that they know too much (and have trouble narrowing their subject) than than they know too little. Many confess to us that they read more the assigned reading because they feel they need to understand things better if they are to understand a thing at all. Many of them are seeking the overarching framework inside which they can put their new bit of knowledge. Often these are 'why' kids - who need to know why something is true, not just that something is true. For those of us who are content to be 'little picture' thinkers when called for, the drive seems a little arbitrary and perhaps fatuous- but if you see enough of these kids, it seems more than a preference, it is a necessary requirement for learning at least in some people.


What does inductive learning look like in the brain? fMRI is still fairly limited to simple experimental paradigms involving inductive learning, but in a study involving uncertain visual categorization (generate rules from examples), the frontostriatal-thalamic network was active as well as other brain areas. The frontostriatal network is an interesting because of its implication in ADHD and reward and cognitive control.

Picture: Top of the world

Famous People with Dyslexia: Silicon Valley Pioneer William Hewlett (HP)

"I invested a lot of hours disassembling door locks and things like that. My mother just called it mischief."- William Hewlett, co-founder Hewlett-Packard

Bill Hewlett was co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, currently the largest technology company in the world. Hewlett had a difficult early childhood because of his dyslexia and loss of his father in his teens. What started out as a few hundred dollars and space in a garage would soon grow into a high technology company with offices in nearly every country in the world. Hewlett's accomplishments were not limited to technology, however. Some believe his greatest accomplishment was in creating a model for creative corporations today...

"...an egalitarian, decentralized system that came to be known as 'the HP Way'..."...one of the first all-company profit-sharing plans... gave shares to all employees... among the first to offer tuition assistance, flex time, and job sharing... Today, the behavior of the two founders remains a benchmark for business..."

Apparently Bill Hewlett was in favor of flexible hours and schedule-free Fridays to encourage creative thinking on the part of his engineering team.

From Bill and Dave (Michael Malone)
“...young Bill was a brilliant child, an indifferent student, and something of a hellion. He was constantly getting into fights –including one memorable occasion when he came home covered with a bottle of ink…young Bill too had a near brush with explosives ad morality-twice. On one occasion, he nearly killed himself with shrapnel after setting off a homemade grenade constructed from a brass doorknob stuffed with black powder…

At the age of 14, Bill Hewlett lost his father, a prominent Stanford professor, to a brain tumor, and his grandmother packed him, his mother and his sister up for 15 month stay in Europe where Bill was tutored at home. ..Hewlett had been “struggling desperately in school” because of dyslexia.

“He was a classic case: in English and history he struggled gamely, but inevitably failed. He simply couldn’t read the textbooks or keep up with his note-taking in class, so he had to rely entirely on his memory of the teacher’s words. By comparison, in chemistry, physics, and mathematics, Bill’s performance was nothing short of astonishing. This was particularly true when he was allowed to work with his hands. Among other electrical items, he built a pair of crystal radios for himself and his sister, made an electric arc from carbon rods, and even fabricated a Tesla coil In math he…tore through the curriculum so quickly that they had to beg th teacher to instruct them in college-level mathematics…

But…miserable other grades- and the resulting median of mediocrity made him less than a good college prospect…It seemed likely he would now have to attend a trade school…”

The video below was made when Bill Hewlett and David Packard won the 1995 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award. For lots more videos, stories, and resources for dyslexia, join our Dyslexic Advantage community.



Doing it the HP Way
William Hewlett
Stories about Bill Hewlett
Bill and Dave by Michael Malone

Creativity for Non-Visual Thinkers, People with Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities, Aspergers etc.

"A thought may be compared to a cloud shedding a shower of words." - L.S. Vygotsky

Had an email last week from someone with a nonverbal learning disability - and he asked us a great question...that given that visual imagery seems to be so important in creative work, was there hope for NLDer's in the Conceptual Age? Of course! We apologize for not giving as much attention to non-visual thinking on this blog (part of the reason is our interest and large clinic population of dyslexics), so we'd like to correct this slight right now.

Verbal thinkers tend to have less trouble than visual thinkers in conventional K-12 school tasks... but if visual perceptual and organization problems also exist (e.g. nonverbal learning disabilities), more struggles await them in their adult years, driving and reading maps, reading the emotions of their co-workers, bosses, and family members, and keeping their home and work life organized.

The two most important factors we have seen in these individuals' success relate to metacognitive ability -an ability to reflect about their own thinking processes, recognizing their strengths and weaknesses (build on strengths, accommodate weaknesses) and external supports (helps when needed from loved ones - parents, siblings, spouses, professionals, business partners) if and when needed.

We know and have learned of many highly (and sometimes exclusively) verbal thinkers working in various diverse occupations - academia / research, law, business, education, writing, science, math, and computers and engineering. Many of the most successful verbal thinkers capitalize on their strong memories, pattern recognition, reasoning and analytical abilities, and eye for detail.

Verbal thinkers tend to wrestle with ideas through talk, debate, or writing. Brainstorming may take place through conscious chains of deductive thinking, word play or conscious manipulation of words (e.g. drawing verbal analogies),or even verbal brainstorms (e.g. freewriting)in which loosely associated words, digressions, phrases, etc. are written down to open ideas up about a problem or question. impression.

How common is it to not be able to make images? A number is hard to generate as a continuum seems to exist in individuals' image-making ability. At least when we have asked, there always seem to be at least a few people who report that they are unable to make images in non-selected groups of 100.

Some people who don't have pictoral visual images also tell us that although they never get "snapshot" pictures, they do have non-visual imagery (auditory, somatic/ kinesthetic) or strong associations (e.g. feelings emotions, spatial / symbolic representations)that are integral to their thinking style.

Interesting, there was once intense debate over whether visual imagery exists and has a functional importance in the brain(for more, see this). Presumably one the most strident advocates of the anti-imagery position, cognitive psychologist Zenon Pylyshyn, did not have pictoral imagery:

"It is argued that an adequate characterization of "what one knows" requires the use of abstract mental structures to which there is no conscious access and which are essentially conceptual and propositional, rather than sensory or pictorial, in nature. Such representations are more accurately referred to as symbolic descriptions than as images in the usual sense. Implications of using an imagery vocabulary are examined, and it is argued that the picture metaphor underlying recent theoretical discussions is seriously misleading, especially as it suggests that the image is an entity to be perceived." (from What the mind's eye tells the mind's brain)

fMRI of causal reasoning
Employment for people with Aspergers Syndrome
Book: How to find work that works for people with Aspergers Syndrome
Book: Choosing the right work for people with autism or aspgergers syndrome

Famous People with Dyslexia: William Butler Yeats

“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” - William Butler Yeats, poet, Nobel Prize Winner in Literature

William Butler Yeats is one of the most famous poets of all time, but fewer people know of this quote from Yeats Autobiographies: "My father was angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head."

But lest you get a permanent wrong impression of WB Yeats' father, this was also said of him (from Eileen Simpson's wonderful book Reversals):

"When John Butler Yeats finally realized how useless it was to bully his son to rad aloud, when his son was clearly incapable of doing so, the father took over the reading himself. From the time the boy was nine until he was sixteen, father read to son from Macaulay, Scott, Shakespeare, Shelley, Rossetti, Blake- the narrative verse and prose a poet would need to know when he began to write his own verses."

WB Yeats' own recollection of his father's reading times:

"My father's influence upon my thoughts was at its height. We went to Dublin by train every morning, breakfasting in his studio. He had taken a large room with a beautiful eighteenth-century mantelpiece in a York Street tenement house, and at breakfast he read passages from the poets, and always from the play or poem at its most passionate moment."

Below is a video of Yeats reading some of his poems.



The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

For more stories and videos of famous dyslexics, visit Dyslexic Advantage.

Strategic Reasoning = Super Theory of Mind?

Does super strategic reasoning sometimes mean super EQ (emotional intelligence) or theory of mind? Yes, but it depends on the game. In this recent fmri-game study, high strategic reasoning (winners) correlated with strong activation of the medial prefrontal cortex, an area important for 'mind reading' of other peoples' intents and behaviors or theory of mind.

Neuroeconomists are interested in studies such as this because many types of business and financial industry success depend upon accurate prediction of others' behaviors (e.g. customer, investor, competitor).

Well, there is a significant body of research to support the importance of emotional intelligence in business as well as classroom environments. And emotional intelligence appears to be much more 'trainable' than IQ...

In our dyslexic population, a surprising number of students we see do seem to have a strong EQ. They are the ones who are talking about the emotions and motivations of every character in the Cookie Thief picture from the Boston Aphasia battery, and exuding leadership qualities in school, and seem to take longer to assess because it is so enjoyable talking to them and listening to the stories. Some of these kids seem destined for future success in business

Strategic Reasoning
Medial prefrontal cortex and self-referential pdf
Benefits of Emotional Intelligence pdf

Famous People with Dyslexia: Dinosaur Hunter Jack Horner

"If you do something no one else has done, you don't have to read very much, you can just write your own stuff." - Jack Horner, one the world's most famous paleontologists, inspiration for Jurassic Park

Many dyslexics excel in spatial problem solving, analytical ability, and science in general - talents well-suited to the field of paleontology.

"I found my first dinosaur bone at the age of eight during a fossil-hunting trip with my father...Kindergarten through eighth grade was extremely difficult for me because my progress in reading, writing, and mathematics was excruciatingly slow. I would never stand to read out loud in class, even if the teachers threatened to give me failing grades...Eventually, I managed to graduate high school, but just barely, having received Ds in all required classes, including English, in which my grade was a D minus, minus, minus. The teacher told me that this was essentially an F, but that he never wanted to see me again. That was indeed the last time I saw him, but I did send him a copy of my first book!

There was, however, one area of school besides P.E. in which I excelled: science projects."

Horner had an eclectic history before becoming a paleontologist - he was a recon Marine, dabbled in astrophysics at Cal Tech, tried college, but never graduated, worked for his father's gravel business, then "began writing letters to every museum in the English speaking world asking if they had any jobs open for anyone ranging from a technician to a director..."

The video below is more about spinosaurus, than Jack Horner's dyslexia, but we wanted to post for all those young dyslexics who love dinosaurs. Find more about Jack's early life and dyslexia here: http://mtprof.msun.edu/Spr2004/horner.html




For more stories and videos of famous dyslexics, visit Dyslexic Advantage.