Do you think visually?

I have a memory that I'd describe as visual. I can often picture the textbook page or object I need to remember - or just a particular word (which is why I was always good at spelling and learning languages). I have a lot of memories that do work the way you describe as well - I can kind of replay them in my mind, like a piece of film. But I can't vouch for their accuracy, because you know... time.

Interestingly, my son is on the autism spectrum and does not take verbal direction well at all; he is a more visual learner than I am, though.

I'm not sure how to advise you on how to search for information on this topic. Do you have access to a college or university library? The reference librarians at them are very helpful and can teach you how to search for current articles and books on particular subjects. (Also, there are a few librarians at ILX who could potentially be of help...)

yeah i guess wasn't expecting trying to find info. i've just been thinking about it a lot lately.

I'm a very visual thinker. When looking up something in a book, for example, I can often remember where it was on the page without remembering the content of what I was looking for. But visal thinking goes beyond memory to active thinking process - sorting information, schedules, problem solving, etc. all work in a very visual way for me.

wait, so what do you see in your mind? is 'see' not even a word you use for it then?

i imagine there is stuff written abt this re: people who are blind?

i see a lot of things

I'm trying to find literature from psychologists or neorologists on this topic

Often a good way to start is to type in your keywords ("visual thinking") and then specify under Google options that you only want pdf docs.

yeah, i could say i see 'see' anything. i have tried to close my eyes and call up images in my mind, but i can't do it!

Read Temple Grandin's books. She's autistic, a visual thinker, and articulate about what that means in her world.

I'm a visual thinker, esp. when it comes to math and pattern. Or, remembering where objects are - I can mentally picture them where I last saw them, see what was next to them, or the color of the surface they were on, and generally find them from that.

they really pushed the visual-auditory-kinisthetic learning style model in my elementary school and were always giving us tests to figure out which we were. most people are visual. i am almost entirely auditory, i can't visualize things at all which i blame for my total clumsiness and poor sense of direction.

Take some mescalin!

I am and, for as long as I can remember, I have always been a poor visualizer. Words, even the pregnant words of poets, do not evoke pictures in my mind. No hypnagogic visions greet me on the verge of sleep. When I recall something, the memory does not present itself to me as a vividly seen event or object. By an effort of the will, I can evoke a not very vivid image of what happened yesterday afternoon, of how the Lungarno used to look before the bridges were destroyed, of the Bayswater Road when the only buses were green and tiny and drawn by aged horses at three and a half miles an hour. But such images have little substance and absolutely no autonomous life of their own. They stand to real, perceived objects in the same relation as Homer's ghosts stood to the men of flesh and blood, who came to visit them in the shades. Only when I have a high temperature do my mental images come to independent life. To those in whom the faculty of visualization is strong my inner world must seem curiously drab, limited and uninteresting. This was the world—a poor thing but my own—which I expected to see transformed into something completely unlike itself.

The change which actually took place in that world was in no sense revolutionary. Half an hour after swallowing the drug I became aware of a slow dance of golden lights. A little later there were sumptuous red surfaces swelling and expanding from bright nodes of energy that vibrated with a continuously changing, patterned life.

(Aldous Huxley - Doors of Perception)

i visualize a calendar year with the months in 4 rows of 3 across, with january at the top left and december at the bottom right.

i'm pretty sure this has to do with a ranger rick calendar i had as a child.

funny, when i took acid i was always dissappointed at the lack of visuals

(xpost)

When I was a kid, I was really visual, but at this point I'm probably about 99% auditory. It's odd, because I have memories of having semi-photographic memory, but at this point I can't even imagine what it was like.

xposts: Oddly enough, I think that if I was to pinpoint when this shift away from visual thinking occurred, it would be at the point when I was poking about in hallucinogenland (although I did have visual effects).

I'm all of them in different ways: I always hated taking those tests because I felt like I was being pigeonholed. I learn best how to do something kinesthetically, which is why knitting/playing an instrument instruction books are a struggle for me (pictures instead of someone showing me how to move my hands). But as far as learning facts and info, I'm almost equal visually and aurally.

I do remember in kindergarten that every time I learned a new word I would imagine it in stone on a white background with a rectangular frame also made of stone. And every time I'm trying to remember a word for something, I imagine a static picture of a cartoon turtle. It distracts me enough that the word just comes up: if I try to think of the word directly through memory, it takes much longer to figure it out.

I think most kids do have a good eidetic memory, which fades during puberty. I guess it probably doesn't have a strong evolutionary value.

it always bothered me that people with a 'photographic memory' thought they had a monopoly on rememberence.

And hallucinogens always give me full-blown body high all over in 25 different and simultaneous ways; dozens of voices and sounds all at once, and colors of translucent strings connecting everything. It gets completely overwhelming and annoying. One time everything I saw had a CNN style running broadcast of nonsense words at the top of my field of vision that were being sang and chanted with marching band music while I felt I physically embodied a lowercase letter k. So I'd say if that's a litmus test, I've got 'em all to an irritating extent. It's hard for me to concentrate in normal experience because I can't quit paying attention to everything all at the same time.

funny, when i took acid i was always dissappointed at the lack of visuals

hmm..reminds me of that Spitting Image sketch where John Major was dosed with some acid - "Wow, I never knew there were all these shades of grey".

I learn best in fact taking notes of someone talking, and when I want to study I just rewrite my notes while reading them aloud to myself or read them aurally in my mind. Visual: the words, auditory: hearing the words, kinesthetic: writing the notes. All at once seals it in my mind most excellent.

One of my Philosophy tutors is adamant that nobody can think visually, although he is wronger than wrongo wrongington in a wrong boutique. There's quite a lot of philosophical literature on the subject (for instance, on why 'a picture in the mind' is impossible, which is true, but mainly semantically). In terms of imagining visually, I'd recommend Greg Currie's ideas in 'Recreative Minds' (pretty academic, though), and also Temple Grandin - I've studied but not read her, but apparently the books are interesting and not too dry.

wronger than wrongo wrongington in a wrong boutique

hahahaha

I truly have no idea how I think.

Philosophy tutors should really do their best not to be adamant about anything.

haha philosophy tooter

Philosophy tutors should really do their best not to be adamant about anything.

Nah, I prefer it when they have clearly delineated viewpoints. We got taught an ethics course by an amoralist, and it was one of the best courses I've done - you have something to argue against, rather than just a boring explanatory cover-all-the-ground blob of stuff.

I remember looking into this after reading "frogs into princes" - which is the book that started off Neuro-Linguistic Programming (mind re-training technique very loosely linked to hypnosis). The writers suggested you're either visual, verbal/aural or kinasethetic so you'll use phrases like "I see where you're coming from", "I hear what you're saying", "I can grasp what you mean". I was surprised to find how visual most of my language is (I always thought I'd be verbal).

Having done things like the VARK learning style questionnaire (I was going to link to this, but it seems to be FORBIDDEN) since I found I'm a kinaesthetic learner primarily, followed by a visual learner. The meaning there is slightly different in that you need to experience things to really learn them if you're kinaesthetic, or see someone else performing them if you're verbal. No point in telling me what to do, or giving me instructions, I'll forget them straight away.

Weirdly, though, I don't think visually. If something is demonstrated visually, that tends to impress me, but I can't visualise things in my head very well. I've been hypnotised loads of times, but as soon as some imagery work is required, I struggle. Apparently, the thing to do is not try, and just let it come, but I tend just to end up falling asleep if I do that.

I do think I'm a visual person. I just don't have those visualisations in my mind, I need to see them or create them in real life.

I do think visually quite often but then I also see verbally a lot, too.

I suppose I think visually, but not in pictures. More in printed words. Can you be a verbal but not auditory learner, then? I tune out of lectures but study well from notes, can't attend to phone conversation if there's a newspaper or website in sight, and have the worst time learning things like knitting because watching someone do it seems to have no relation to what to do with *my* hands, but verbal instructions always seem vague, like "put the thing on the left around the other thing on top." Haha, maybe I just can't learn kinetic things, period.

I am visual to an excess. Being able to see words in my head was my secret spelling bee weapon. Close my eyes, imagine how I'd write it, say it out loud. I have learn to play games by playing them - reading the rules without having any concept of the game board or how pieces look was useless.

My verbal learning ability/skills are absolute shit. I can ace everything in a language class that involves reading (or speaking, I can 'see' accents and how they work), but exercises where I have to listen to people speak screw me. I often feel like I miss dialogue in TV/movies/plays - but I wonder if it's some kind attention thing. I do fine if I can control the volume and there's no other noise present, but if I'm not paying absolute attention it can get garbled.

I suppose I think visually, but not in pictures. More in printed words. Can you be a verbal but not auditory learner, then? I tune out of lectures but study well from notes, can't attend to phone conversation if there's a newspaper or website in sight, and have the worst time learning things like knitting because watching someone do it seems to have no relation to what to do with *my* hands, but verbal instructions always seem vague, like "put the thing on the left around the other thing on top." Haha, maybe I just can't learn kinetic things, period.

-- Maria, Wednesday, June 6, 2007 8:08 PM (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I think it depends who is doing the theorising! The R part of the VARK questionnaire stands for reading - the styles being Visual, auditory, reading and kinaesthetic. Lots of people can read notes but not listen to spoken words. Personally (and oddly, as someone who reads a lot and would like to be able to write) I can't concentrate on something written at all if someone is talking, or if there is music with lyrics playing.

I don't think I have a very visual mind at all (certainly no photographic memory, was always terrible at the take-one-object-away memory games, have trouble remembering faces or where I put anything) but I also get the thing where you remember where the information was on the page and the shape of the paragraphs but not the content of any of them, not even diagrams, and also since it's mentioned in that Huxley quote some pretty weird hypnagogic images from time to time.

This may be unrelated but I find that if I make an appointment or someone lists some instructions I have to repeat the main points to fix them in my mind, otherwise I'll forget them. There was a thread where someone was angry about people who did this on the phone and I felt kind of guilty, but not enough to stop, because it's probably less annoying than being the person who has to call back later asking them to repeat it all.

I'm envious of people who can 'recall' visually as it pertains to films(don't know if this falls under the purview of the thread). People who can analyze clever color palette changes and composition, cinematographic antecedents etc., from scene to scene while they're watching the thing. Like I have to be hit over the head to 'get' all but the most iconic and obvious and indelible scenes(harry lime looking up from the shadows et al) but the vast majority of visual information instantly washes together in service of trying to follow the plot and maybe taking in the acting.
I knew a girl who seemed to recall every single word of conversation she had during the day and very much enjoyed to share these conversations. wherever this fits in-- not fun.

i also feel like i'm at the mercy of visual thinkers in day-to-day interactions, I imagine they're getting together in my office and counting the number of times i've worn something and can pick apart what's wrong with my outfit in like 2 seconds, when it would take half an hour(which i am unable and unwilling to devote) for me to do so satisfactorily.

I think that 98% of mathematicians use mental 2d/3d models when they work, and the 3d models are 2d + t.

I think aurally -- sometimes I want to tell my thoughts to stop being so noisy. I have wondered about the visual thinking and have tried to practice it and can call up some images, but my mind is actually a fairly dark but noisy place.

what people have said upthread regarding remembering placement on pages and all totally sums up my memory

I can still remember shapes of graphs i studied years ago. It was always the way i studied for tests too - if i could remember 1 thing on a page then Id remember something else important that was just down and to the left of it and so on. Id basically remember entire pages. The problem is always sorting out what the info means and then translating it into words.

hay
sometimes i tie a little string around my index finger to remember stuff

This thread has me thinking (haw), and I'm starting to wonder if I think visually at all! I think I get impressions and my memory works more in ... I dont know how to put it. Rhythm and pattern and aural ways? I can remember numbers and tunes and voices and words, but not because I see them, because they're in my head in other ways.

I find it hard to visualise someone's face even when I know them well, but I can hear their voice instantly.

I suppose thats why I'm good at music and writing, and not art.

On the other hand i dont remember numbers and dates and stuff like that at all.

The only birthday I know is my own, and I know a total of maybe five phone numbers - two of which are my own.

I used to be so good at learning phone numbers, basically any one belonging to anybody I knew that I dialed more than once was fixed in my brain forever. Then I got a cell phone and haven't learned one since.

actually, i am still really good at learning sequences of numbers, though. maybe that connects to verbal rather than visual learning.

Yeah cell phone address books have effed up my number memory too!

But I can easily remember long strings of network MAC addresses and DNS addresses, and I'm shit at math. Its the rhythm of reciting the numbers, thats how I recall them.

My mother can (mentally) page through a book apparently. I however have more of an auditive (?) memory.

I think I can think visually, but I totally agree with the Huxley quote upthread:

But such images have little substance and absolutely no autonomous life of their own. They stand to real, perceived objects in the same relation as Homer's ghosts stood to the men of flesh and blood, who came to visit them in the shades. Only when I have a high temperature do my mental images come to independent life.

Are people using "visual thinking" in different ways here? To me it's metaphorical - I can "picture" someone's face but I don't actually see anything, there's no image hovering in front of my eyes or anywhere else, and I would actually be really surprised if anyone does think like that.

Someone is confusing "visualising" and "visions" if they think that they are.

The only time I've ever had visions is under the influence of drugs, while fevered, or during psychotic breaks. Not the same thing at all.

A very interesting thread, though, I have spent some time trying to figure out *how* I think, it's a combination of being both very visual and very verbal/aural. The things come together, words and concepts. Though I certainly don't have a photographic memory, I do tend to conceptualise things in terms of images.