Talk:Visual thinking

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[edit] Geographical thinking

There is a whole section of geographical thinking that has not been added here. Whilst it is a stub, it has the ability to be expanded in a much greater capacity, given appropriate research with people such as Silverman but also with input from behavioural geographers. 01:55, 5 July 2006 (UTC) Parawirra

Could you have a look at my section on topographical thinking at the bottom of the talk page? Since you haven't elaborated on the topic of geographical thinking, I'm wondering if you are referring to the same thing. Zuiram 01:28, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice, this article is about me isn't it...

                     ...thanks a lot, Haraldur.

[edit] POV

This article borrows liberally from The Visual-Spatial Learner: An Introduction. Has anyone asked Dr. Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D., for her permission to use her material like this?

This reads like pseudo-scientific propaganda, complete with an MBTI-like enumeration of famous individuals that supposedly represent the characteristics of the model.

I resemble this. This sounds like an amped-up version of the common aptitude that the Johnson O’Connor Human Engineering Laboratory calls 'Structural Visualization'. (http://www.jocrf.org/) Simply stated, people with this talent can visualize structures in 3D and even manipulate that visualization. For the physician, this gives a sort of 'virtual x-ray vision', an engineer might experience it as an instant, mental, CAD-CAM program, while an interior designer would be able to simply look at a room and know what furniture will fit.

The current article may read like pseudo-science, but the... phenomenon is real, testable, and inherited.

[edit] XPLANE listing

Should XPLANE really be included in see also? Timothy Clemans 21:23, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed this sentence

I removed the following sentence, "*Thinking at a subliminal rate of 32 concepts per second, as opposed to the 6-7 words per second experienced by typical verbal-sequential thinkers, thus appearing to intuitively come to conclusions that are very hard to reach by using typical linear reasoning". 32 concepts per second? This sounds like nonsense, I took it out. --Xyzzyplugh 04:23, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, that sentence stuck out for me as well. A "subliminal rate" would probably be difficult to measure experimentally. Additionally, 32 is a precise number, where a range like "25-35" would really be more appropriate. If someone can find the study that spawned this concept, feel free to reference it. pmj 22:07, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
The exact figure seems odd, and would presumably be dependent on the task at hand as well as the dominating frequency band of the brain at the time (i.e. while visual thinking may persist at predominantly delta levels near sleep, it would likely be nowhere as fast as at predominantly beta levels during concentration).
That said, my "visual" thinking rate appears to be slightly faster in terms of cycles per second than my verbal thinking; however, the main advantage is not in the cycles per second domain (sequential speed) but rather in expressiveness (net bandwidth).
It is possible to process several "symbols"/"concepts" at the same time, depending on what is being considered, typically leading to a higher parallelism (for me, at least) as verbal thinking is hard for me to parallelize. That could be construed as a higher rate, but would need clarification with regards to iterations per second, as opposed to concepts per second. I have no difficulty accepting 32 nodes consciously visited in a second, but I do have difficulty accepting 32 stages of processing in a second.
Unconscious processing of this sort appears to be faster than conscious processing, and easier to commit to memory; this could have something to do with volume of intermediate nodes, selecting new nodes to commit, or simply a kind of resistance to the higher net throughput due to a feeling of less control if you're a visual thinker that has worked primarily in the verbal mode due to external interactions.
Zuiram 00:55, 25 December 2006 (UTC)
In computer terms, you can't measure the performance of something just by looking at the 'clock rate' - you also have to consider the amount of parallelism that can be employed - the cost of communication between the parallel parts of the processor, the consequences of Amdahl's law, the number and nature of specialised processors that are uniquely suited to a particular task - and how efficiently the 'algorithm' is implemented on the hardware that's provided. Since we are not even close to knowing any of those things for verbal versus spatial reasoning in humans, it is utterly pointless to even discuss the 'clock rate' at which some parts of the brain are operating. This is bogus - it is bad science, bordering on pseudo-science - and it doesn't belong in this article, either with exact number or a range of numbers or even without numbers at all. SteveBaker 02:10, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems

While this is certainly a valid and interesting concept, most of the article does not ring true, and amounts to nothing more than pseudoscience. What to do? —Viriditas | Talk 09:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree that this article sounds somewhat pseudoscientific at the moment. It also comes across as npov in favour of visual thinking. Have a look at unsourced statements like: "Among gifted students, the proportion of visual-spatial learners may be much higher. In one small sample, more than three-fourths of the gifted students preferred visual-spatial methods." It really reads like a self help book written to sell copies improve the self esteem of visual thinkers rather than a clear well sourced article about an aspect of human psychology. Saluton 22:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Focus on disability

Is it just me or is the article an attempt to conflate several mental disabilities with a particular mechanism present in all individuals? If you had only one hand (the left), you could "prove" that you're not disabled, but merely left-handed. Similarly, this article points out in every second sentence that autism and dyslexia are concomitant with visual thinking. Obviously, if a certain mechanism (here, language) is damaged, similar tasks are handled by a another mechanism (here, visual thinking). That doesn't mean that mentally disabled people are just as gifted like the most skilled visual thinkers (with or without a language-related disability). --Vuo 16:00, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Left handedness.

I have no proof - but it seems to me that an unusually large percentage of visual thinkers are also left-handed. It kinda makes sense because a larger proportion of dyslexics are left handed, as are the mildly autistic Asperger's syndrome people. Left-handers also dominate occupations such as architecture. This is really striking to me - and I'm surprised it's not in the article. Is there published evidence for this? (I wouldn't want to promote 'original research' here). SteveBaker 20:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

The article: Left-handed claims visual thinkers are statistically more likely to be left handed - and also backs up the link with dyslexia and mild autism. SteveBaker 20:36, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Visual and linguistic

This article seems to infer that one is either a visual thinker or a linguistic thinker. Could it be argued that certain individuals would be able to use both forms of thinking, albeit for different purposes. For instance, when one initially reasons out an idea in order to reach a conclusion, they do so linguistically, but when recalling their thought patterns, they would be perfectly capable of quickly resurfacing the idea to as well as how they came to there conclusion without requiring the time needed to undergo the every step of there reasoning process every time they recollect said idea? Further, could it also be argued that verbal thinkers do in fact use visual thinking to a lesser extent, even if it is secondary to their verbal line of thought? 66.24.236.62 01:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is the issue I was addressing in my paragraph above. This article 'dissects' a normal mechanism from a healthy system and associates it with mental disability. I also suspect that psychology is (at least nowadays) so primitive that only one mechanism is assumed to present in one individual. --Vuo 11:24, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to see references for this. Are we looking at people with 100% visual thinking versus people with 100% linguistic skills - are we presuming that there are people with 50% of the visual thinking skills and 50% of the linguistic skills or are we imagining a 'superhuman' person with 100% of both sets of skills? I have no clue. I'm definitely a visual thinker - people at work know that I'm incapable of conveying a coherent thought without a white-board to scribble on. I certainly have linguistic skills (I'm able to use them right here and now) - but are they as good as 'verbal thinkers'...? I suspect not - but it's hard to tell. Without some kind of solid reference on this subject, I don't think we should be engaging in Original Research (WP:NOR). SteveBaker 18:04, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
"Visual" thinking in the sense that I interpret the term is qualitatively different from verbal thinking, and so much so that it would appear to be something you have or lack. It is certainly different from visualization/mind's eye/episodic memory. However, your proficiency in both will depend on what you train; there appear to be many people who "have" the ability to do "visual" thinking, but have relied exclusively on verbal thinking, at least for conscious thought.
Ease of communication depends on your ability to translate between modes, as well as whether the person(s) you are communicating with think "visually". I can totally relate to the whiteboard issue, but I have no problem communicating coherently with many "verbal thinkers". My main issue has been on the receiving end, in that verbal communication can sometimes have a large volume with little content, leading to difficulty consolidating what is being communicated into "nodes".
Being "on the same page" helps immensely, particularly with "visual" thinkers on the receiving end. If your internal topographies are fairly congruent, it becomes trivial to communicate the "visual" content verbally. The "visual" thinkers I know refer to this form of communication as a "brain dump"; rarely is there any significant divergence in the conclusions reached, the interpretation/understanding of the material, etc. after such a short session of verbally nonlinear communication.
I'd be hesitant to call "visual" thinking superior, though, with the notable exception of areas where the inherent parallelism and topographical organization is required to consolidate comprehension of the topic in a suitable timeframe. Systems design appears to be one such area, where I have yet to see a verbal thinker produce a large design that "feels" conceptually coherent; I'd love a counterexample, though.
Zuiram 01:10, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spatial-temporal reasoning

I am against merging Spatial-temporal reasoning into the present article. There is a whole body of research from computer science and psychology about spatio-temporal reasoning, see e.g. [1]. --Tillmo 20:01, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal with Visual learning

  • Oppose - It is possible to teach people using pictures even if they are not visual thinkers. Visual thinkers can be taught using only words. The two topics are pretty much unrelated. I am a visual thinker - I read books and the words turn into pictures in my mind. I don't necessarily want to be taught in pictures because it's such a long winded way of getting some concepts across. Visual thinking is an attribute of human minds - visual learning is a teaching technique. I just don't see any overlap whatever between the subjects. SteveBaker 17:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose - What Steve said. I prefer high-rate high-density verbal learning (150-300wpm) or high-rate multipass reading (1000+ wpm). It allows me to form the concepts and sensory images (pictures etc.) in a manner that meshes with the existing topography. A diagram or schematic can be illustrative and occasionally indispensable for a few things, but this has nothing to do with the visual/verbal thinking bits. Zuiram 01:14, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Visual" vs topographical thinking

As the article name and text indicates, it appears to deal explicitly in visual concepts. I relate to what is being said, but find it more accurate to describe this in terms of nodes that can contain any combination of sensory still- or motion-images along with an abstract cognitive context, organized into a topographical map which can be visually represented, but works faster and better for me if I don't do that intermediate "rendering" stage. Verbal data is only rarely included in a node. Is this an indication of a different kind of thinking, which should be linked from this article; that the article is dealing with a particular aspect of such thinking, not the whole; that such a mode of thinking has been shown to be the visual analogue of subvocalization; or that it is hard for "verbal thinking" researchers to recognize an abstraction that cannot be adequately described in a mode they are familiar with? If its just me, it doesn't belong in an encyclopaedia, but I doubt it is, so if anyone knows anything about this, it'd be nice if they could chime in here. Anyone who doesn't, but thinks this way, can put their anecdotes on my talk page, and I'll see if I can get around to organizing an article or wikibook about it. Zuiram 01:26, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

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