"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
This is a comment from a visual thinker. (I have to be a visual thinker because I don't understand what it means to be "unable to make images." Really? Are there folks who don't make images?!) I also have this feeling that I am jumping into a conversation that has been going on for a while, and I only overheard bits and pieces. Bear with me pls.
ReplyDeleteI got out of this blog the idea that verbal thinkers may have difficulties with perception and organization that stand in the way of standardized, conventional learning AND be creative thinkers also. So far so good?
I'd like to hear more on the contrast between visual and verbal thinkers, and the continuum between them.
When I re-read my own question, I can't tell if it is way too naive or way too profound. Both, probably, all at once. It is as if I were one of my students, earnestly asking for an explanation of the difference between metaphor and metonymy. Yikes! Where do I start? And how can I come up with an answer that will satisfy BOTH the student and myself?
Well, maybe a more productive question would be to ask in what ways the distinction between visual X verbal thinkers helps understand kids? or understand the nature of the different difficulties that some kids have with standardized teaching?
I'd better stop. The second version of the question seems to have become just as broad and unhelpful as the first.
Thanks for listening,
Luiza
It's funny how often this comes up - we've had colleagues come up to us and say - "Really? can people really make distinct picture images?...I can't imagine any thought without words." I would say a majority of people have some images - but they seem to vary a great deal in terms of their vividness. And of course, so people (kids as well as adults) have no image-making ability at all.. we had one young girl say, "My teacher always says "Make a picture in your mind..." I can't! I have no idea what she's talking about.
ReplyDeleteThe presence of visual and verbal thinking extremes may not necessarily mean 'disease'. The verbal thinkers are likely to think the visual thinkers are a bit slow in the language department, while the visual thinkers are likely to think the verbal thinkers are a bit slow in the visual department. Who should set the standards? Psychologists? Don't think so - many psychologists seem to lean toward verbal thinking, in our informal experience...
The most dramatic example of different clusters of visual vs. verbal thinkers came when we gave a teaching seminar for K-12 Jewish schools - the teachers who had the youngest children had the highest incidence of exclusively visual thinking, the middle school group had the highest group of exclusively verbal thinking (the school system heavily emphasized logic and argumentation in the middle school years) and the high school teachers had a fairly significant balance between visual and verbal thinking.
This is an interesting post, I myself am getting dug into the neuropsychology side of learning disability.
ReplyDeleteWhat I am seeing, is two broad categories, very much going into these two sides. In fact, looking into some of the history, Dyslexia was originally identified as ANY type of difficulty in reading, and when subtypes were investigated (while there are many variations) there are 2 or 3 groups.
One is a group with dyslexia who show up in the early grade-school years who seem to have difficulty understanding that the shapes of the letters represent phonetic sounds. Once they get that piece of visual information tuned, they tend to go "off-radar" as far as special education goes.
The second group, comes later, and they seem to have difficulty phonetically decoding words - what I believe we call Dyslexia today. They really start falling behind in reading when words get difficult to memorize visually.
There is a group or two more depending on whose study you read, which tends to be made up of a combination of the above two groups, and these kids seem to have a lot of difficulty overall.
I am one of the kids in the first group, who most likely have some type of nonverbal learning disability, be it Asperger's or the actual NLD syndrome. Since their reading difficulties tend to disappear, they get forgotten about, and few people see their other deficits, such as understanding non-verbal communication, which probably stem from their difficulties processing visually and their overall organizational problems.
Just wanted to, an a probably overly verbose way, say it is really great to see people talking about a broad idea of assets and deficits... I suspect our hyper-focus on specific syndromes and symptoms has slowed progress in the long-run.
~Carrie
Wow! This is all new to me! I was just reading Temple Grandin and was stumped when she said she was different because she is a visual learner. Don't we all think in pictures?
ReplyDeleteSo I did a search on visual vs verbal thinking and ended up here.
I am a 60 y/o cowboy - who holds an MBA. I read constantly, and convert all those words to pictures. I also write constantly - converting the images of my day to words. What does that make me?
My mother-in-law makes constant comments that suddenly tell me she is a verbal thinker - maybe thats why I can't understand the way she thinks!
I have a very analytical mind, and have always been baffled as to why so many people fail to use logic - and had categorized them as "emotional" vs "cerebral". Is that something different?
I'd sure like to correspond with anyone who can illuminate me - or guide me to illumination - on this subject. It astounds me that I have lived this many years without ever hearing of this concept!
klhanawalt@gmail.com