Have you ever
found yourself so immersed in a book that the rest of the world seems to melt
away? Or, have you had to draw a picture in order to understand a complex
concept? In both of these situations concept imagery is at work. Concept
imagery is what creates movies in our minds when we are especially enrapt in a
vivid text. It is also what is missing when we find ourselves confused by complex,
multi-step word problems or strange and exigent concepts. Concept imagery is
what we provide for ourselves when we draw, diagram or outline those challenging
ideas. Once we create these concrete illustrations our questions are answered and
we can grasp and hold-on to the concept with assured understanding. We can
visualize it as the product of its interdependent parts just by accessing the
imagery now imbedded in our minds. In this case, concept imagery is working in
reverse, going from pencil to paper to comprehension and then finally, critical
mental manipulation.
To paraphrase the
great visionary, Albert Einstein, if we can’t picture it, we can’t understand
it. Therefore, through picturing comes understanding. Without imagery, one
cannot manipulate nor draw logical connections and conclusions from the
information one has received. This is why concept imagery is essential to
learning and understanding. With the recent education reform, schools are
beginning to measure student success based primarily on their understanding of
important concepts in all disciplines. Because students are being asked to
demonstrate their concept mastery by referencing the key people, places,
objects and ideas involved in important lessons, concept imagery is going to be
increasingly important for student’s to keep-up with their accumulative lessons
and to strengthen their understanding of each subject. Unfortunately, educators
rarely acknowledge the fact that visual cognition plays an enormous role in
learning. However, by stimulating concept imagery in their classroom, using
visually focused methods, teachers can greatly enhance students’ academic
experiences and strengthen their reading, comprehension and language skills.
Science
Visual cognition
is part and parcel to concept imagery. Author, James T. Enns, describes how in
his book, The Thinking Eye, The Seeing Brain, stating that:
Thinking seems to
occur in an abstract medium, not limited in any obvious way by what we are
seeing or have seen. . . . [T]hese common understandings of vision and thought
are based on inaccurate and outmoded concepts . . . [M]uch of what we call
thinking relies heavily on the same parts of the brain that are used when we
see the world around us” (3).
Thoughtful optometrist or
ophthalmologist will agree that the power for understanding our world lies not
exclusively in our eyes, nor in our minds but in both working together. Thinkers
about vision have discovered and dispelled several significant myths about
human perception pervasive in mainstream understanding. Enns describes one of
these myths as “the myth that seeing occurs automatically and without any
thoughtful activity on our part” (4). This “passive vision process” does not
exist according to Enns (7). And can be dispelled by the ideas of an impartial
witnesses or visual illusions. When recalling visual imagery even the most
unbiased witness cannot separate their mind’s influence from their visual information.
Emotional, motivational and a cause/effect analysis’ are inherent to any
observation. Our thoughts influence our visual experiences; thus when we look
at an M. C. Escher drawing, our mental analysis of the illustration on the page
allows for a playful exchange between our eyes and brain, where seemingly
stagnant ladders begin to bend, landscapes become skylines and swimming fish
begin to fly.
Insofar as vision happens
passively is a myth, so is the idea that “we can think without using our
senses” (Enns, 4). Enns’ illustrates this further, stating:
Even though it
may be impossible to separate seeing and understanding, sensation and
perception, surely higher levels of cognition – such as long-term memory
retrieval and problem solving – can be separated from the processes of vision.
Thinking, after all, should not be dependent on vision, as many people with
poor sight will attest. But this, too, is a myth. (12)
Every mode of thought, be it memory
or analysis happens in conjunction with the areas in our brain where we manage
the visual intake, retention and processing of sensory information. In this
way, thought is contingent upon having a foundation of visual information
supporting our ideas. Without this visual component we could not recall
information accurately through memory nor could we analyze information
critically, weighing new visual information against the related concepts we
have stored within our banks of visual cognition. Enns further scrutinizes the
myth of imageless thought by stating that, “much of cognition is inherently
perceptual (and often visual) and involves the same neural machinery as the
senses, although sometimes the shared neural machinery operates in different
ways for seeing and thinking” (12). He illustrates this idea by asking his
reader to recall the placement of the windows in their previous residence. He
writes, “how many windows were visible to you when you approached the front
door or the main entrance? What were the shapes of these windows?” (12). How do
we answer these types of long-term memory questions? Why, visually of course.
Enns goes on to explain:
[S]uch questions
require the formation of mental simulations that can be “seen” in ways similar
to seeing the immediate world. Our brains re-create the conditions in our
mind’s eyes as best they can. Furthermore, these simulations rely on the same
brain regions and the same neurons that would be required to see the solution
if you were actually standing in front of your former residence. (12)
This is a perfect example of
concept imagery in action. To gain the information we need to answer Enns’
question we must access our visual memory and reenact entering our past
residence. We replay the mental “tape” we recorded every day while exiting and
entering that home to see where and what shape the windows. This is the basic
principal behind concept imagery. If we can recreate the information found in
our students’ textbooks visually, we can assist them in establishing a vast
bank of knowledge supported by visual cognition.
History
Despite the fact that few educators promote
visual exercises in their classrooms today in order to enhance their student’s
working memories, cognition and conceptual analysis, prominent educators and
pedagogical theorists throughout history have written on and emphasized the benefits
of utilizing imagery to strengthen cognition. Nanci Bell creates a timeline for
us in her handbook, Visualizing and Verbalizing: for Language Comprehension
and Thinking, to note the “historical perspectives on the relationship
between imagery and cognition,” beginning as early as 556-468 B.C. when “Simonides
taught people to use imagery to improve their memories. His system was taught
to many Greek and Roman orators who, without notes or cue cards, sometimes
spoke for several hours” (12). By thinking back to Enns’ description of visual
cognition and visual memory, one can imagine how Simonides may have trained his
orator students to recite for long hours by utilizing concept imagery. By anchoring
ones ideas or narrative within a series of imagery-based “cue cards” any stage
actor, politician, teacher or general speechmaker can retain language and
deliver a constant stream of logically connected ideas by accessing their
visual “cue cards” sequentially. Without connecting language to imagery, even
the most experienced orator can lose their place in a speech or slip-up on
their words.
After
Simonides came Aristotle around 348 B.C. In his work, On Memory and Recollection, he wrote, “It is impossible even to
think without a mental picture. . . . [M]emory or remembering is a state
induced by mental images related as a likeness to that of which it is an image”
(Aristotle, cited by Bell, 12). But what has happened with visual cognition since?
Have all theories uniting image and cognition died by way of the Greek tragedy?
Thankfully, no, they have not. Several prominent psychologists have studied
their connection in recent years. One who is most remarked upon and referenced
to by modern educators is, Jean Piaget, who in “1936, wrote in favor of a
perceptual base to memory. According to Piaget, knowledge structures, or schemata, are acquired when the infant
actively manipulates, touches and interacts with the environment. As objects
are manipulated, sensory-motor schemata are developed and changed to
accommodate new information” (Bell, 13). He writes, “Over time, schemata become
internalized in the form of imaged thought. It is clear that imaginal
representations are not formed with the same facility in each case, and that
there is therefore a hierarchy of image levels, which may correspond to stages of
development . . . the evolution of images is a kind of intermediate between
that of the perceptions and that of the intelligence” (Piaget, cited by Bell,
13). A wide-range pedagogical theorist have since embraced Piaget’s concept of
visual schemata although often the visual component is underemphasized and a
strict information-based schemata is left. With no visual component to anchor
new information into one’s visual memory, Piaget’s idea of schemata breaks
down; for, imagery is what provides strength to the schemata’s structure.
Since
these early minds in education wrote about imagery and cognition, modern
educators and psychologists have taken-up the torch. Howard Gardner for
example, writes about the “cognitive revolution” in his book, The
Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand, stating:
The key notion of the cognitive revolution is “mental representation.”
Cognitive psychologists believe that individuals have ideas, images, and
various “languages” in their mind-brain; these representations are real and
important, and are susceptible to study by scientists and to change by
educators. Now, laypersons––not to mention an impressive array of philosophers
including Plato and Aristotle, Descartes and Kant––have long believed that
individuals traffic in such mental representations. (67)
What is most
intriguing in this passage is the concept of these “mental representations”
being changed by educators. This is instrumental to the idea that concept
imagery can be implemented in the classroom. Many of the earliest believers in
concept imagery likely worked with their students one on one to strengthen
their visual representations and thus their memorization and critical thinking
powers, however, Gardner infers that these methods can and should be used in the
classroom. And although the classroom setting presents unique challenges for
the implementation of this teaching strategy, it is invaluable for reinforcing
new and difficult concepts with concrete, methodically built imagery.
Need
The truth is, literacy
rates in the United States are low and over the past ten years, they have not
significantly improved. According to a study published by the U.S. Department
of Education and the National Institute of Literacy on April 28th
2013, thirty two million adults in the United States cannot read. Fifty percentage
of adults in the United States cannot read beyond an 8th grade level,
and fifteen percent of all school age youth in the U. S. have specific reading
disorders (statisticsbrain.com). Children’s Trend Database also recorded that three
million thirty thousand high school students dropout annually, most of them
during the ninth grade. Albeit education comes with its own Pandora’s box of
challenges, however, we can do better. With his theories on Cultural Literacy
and his widely integrated Common Core State Standards, E. D. Hirsch Jr. has set
new goals for the nation’s education system. Notably, these new standards for English
Language Arts & Literacy are built upon the belief that “building knowledge
systematically in English language arts is like giving children various pieces
of a puzzle in each grade that, over time, will form one big picture”
(Coreknowledge.com). The Core Knowledge website explains that the standards emphasize
“the importance of students reading texts across disciplines and building a
foundation of knowledge that will give them the background to be better readers
in all content areas.” It also gives this example of language from the state
and district curriculum: “Students will demonstrate knowledge of people,
events, idea and movements that contributed to the development of the United
States” (Coreknowledge.com). Hirsch’s standards are not perfect, however, nor
are they going away any time soon. In order to most effectively implement the
Common Core’s “content rich” curriculum, educators will have to learn new
strategies for helping students grasp and retain the heavy load of important
people, events and ideas presented to them in every classroom.
An individual’s
foundational and ever expanding cultural knowledge helps support the development
of strong literacy skills. Yet, this knowledge is attained in different ways
for different students. This foundational knowledge and the strong literacy
skills that correspond are essential for their academic success. However, many
students struggle to retain information presented to them orally or textually
in the classroom and are resistant to the rote memorization methodology
employed ad nauseam in mainstream schools. Thus, reinforcing lessons with
concept imagery can help students grapple with difficult concepts more easily
and enable them to be more successful in school. Gardner comments on the
necessity for more personalized and creative methods of teaching, recalling
that, “In times past, schools have been uniform, in the sense that they taught
the same materials in the same way to all students . . . . If one seeks an
education for all human beings, one that helps each achieve his or her
potential then, the educational process needs to be conceived quite
differently” (72). These alternative methods that Gardner refers to are methods
rooted in our modern, psychological, biological and development understanding.
By which students are given two important opportunities, one, to “encounter
materials in ways that allow them access to their content, and two, to . . .
show what they have learned, in ways that are comfortable for them yet also
interpretable by the surrounding society” (73). Both of which can effectively
be accomplished for a wide-range of students through imagery-based instruction
and application. More successful students make for more successful teachers;
therefore presenting lessons in a way that stimulates students’ concept imagery
is highly beneficial for both educators and students.
Method
Concept imagery
can occur automatically for some students and not at all for others. For the
students who are imaging automatically, teachers will notice certain signs that
indicate the student is accessing mental imagery. One clear indication is if
the student’s eyes roll upwards, looking towards their forehead as if accessing
imagery that exists tangibly or at least, observably in the front portion of
their mind. A second, revealing sign that demonstrates a student is picturing,
is if they describe color, movement and size when explaining a concept or
telling a story. Gesturing is another strong indicator of picturing. Students who do not employ these motions
and behaviors may not be creating imagery automatically and may need much
guidance and heavy prompting from their teachers to engage visually with the
classroom material.
Over the summer of
2013, I worked with seventeen year old, young man, who I will refer to as
Samuel for the purpose of this case study. He and his family are members of the
somewhat reclusive Orthodox Jewish community, living in Brooklyn, New York.
Samuel’s came to me with extremely weak concept imagery skills. He was
notorious for answering questions with another question and for describing
specific characters or objects with an adjective-version of the same term. For
example if I asked him what shape I should picture for the dolphin in the story
we were reading together, he would reply, “you know, dolphin-shaped.” His
descriptive vocabulary was very limited and his working memory was extremely
short. Samuel had been living without concept imagery for his entire seventeen
years, and coming from such a sheltered background made him incredulous towards
the Visualizing and Verbalizing© process. However, he indignantly answered my
questions and feigned picturing just to humor me for the first four to five
weeks of his instruction. He came for intensive concept imagery instruction
four hours per day, five days per week for eight weeks. Towards the end of his
fifth week, Samuel and I reached a mutual point of exhaustion and frustration.
His work was only gradually improving and I could not convince him of the
importance of visualization for comprehension.
We reached a point
of catharsis when I asked Samuel to read a story of my own choosing, usually he
insisted upon selecting the readings thus avoiding particularly challenging
concepts. The story I chose was a short one about Narwhals. Upon reviewing the
stories vocabulary, always the first step with students like Samuel, I came to
realize that Samuel was missing concept imagery for almost every important,
active element in the story. Of course narwhals were unknown to him, but to my
surprise so were unicorns and Vikings. These are the types of cultural
archetypes that are pictorially seared into most individuals’ minds by the time
they finish elementary school. However, for students like Samuel who have weak
concept imagery and are culturally isolated, terms like these are empty and
meaningless. To hear myself describe a Viking to Samuel would have been
humorous if it was not so obviously painful for him and seemingly impossible
for him to grasp. After modeling all of the challenging vocabulary with
pictures from the computer and then asking him to describe the pictures to me
as he looked at them, we went back to try and read the short story. Despite my
preliminary efforts to concretize the important imagery for him, the language
obstructed his access to the imagery. Samuel struggled through the first two
sentences and then we stopped.
Because Samuel was
uniquely involved in all phases of his instruction, I verbalized to him why I
chose to stop that story and move onto something else, “because there are too
many common-knowledge vocabulary words that you have no imagery for,” I said,
and he was noticeably stunned. It was then, that Samuel began to understand
what I was trying to do for him. “Is that true?” he asked, and I nodded. It was
as if he had just realized he was living in a dark world. From that point on,
he worked harder and actively engaged in our sessions. He earnestly strove to
access the world of color, shapes and mysterious characters like narwhals and
Vikings. And slowly, he began to activate the pictures in his mind
independently. Upon reading a story, Samuel no longer needed me to question him
about every pertinent visual detail to ensure that he had a complete picture
matching the story; he was doing it by himself.
The fundamentals
for stimulating concept imagery within students who perhaps have weak concept
imagery like Samuel, or just need help to create complete and detail-rich
imagery, are: intense repetition, visually stimulating questioning to reinforce
the idea that nothing is assumed, picture recall for concretizing imagery and
verbal summaries using imagery for support. Repetition is key because for
students like Samuel who have been operating without concept imagery for so
long, it will take intensive, immersion-like work to train their minds to
generate visuals while reading. By questioning students using visual language,
for example, “what do you picture for
a narwhal?” teachers reinforce the imagistic quality of concepts and remind the
students to describe based on their visual knowledge. That nothing is assumed
in this exercise is extremely important. Students often have to be reminded to
picture each story detail or else important albeit subtle details may be
left-out damaging the student’s comprehension of the story’s main idea or key
purpose. Finally, the student must repeat their pictures without verbal cues to
reinforce those images and anchor them sequentially in order to turn around and
deliver a seamless word summary, utilizing the pictures only to recall story
details in order to give a smooth, sequential summary in expository form. If
all of these steps are administered the student will retain these stories for
indefinitely and can think critically, drawing logical conclusions based on
their complete, visually dynamic understanding of the story.
Classroom Application
Although,
this type of intensive visualization cannot be implemented one on one in a
classroom setting, there are adaptations teachers can utilize in order to give
students the benefit of visually stimulating concept imagery instruction. The
first key to having a visually engaged class is to use visual language in
lectures and questioning. Instead of asking students what they understand or
know about a concept, ask them what they picture or imagine. This line of
questioning, if used consistently, will reinforce educators’ visually dynamic
lectures and remind student that they do not have to rack their brains for
specific names and dates, but that their clearly imagined pictures can often
convey far greater understanding than to simply know the name and date of a
significant event. Along with this
visual language, educators should utilize concrete visual-aides when
introducing new topics, places, people, events, and significant relationships. Encouraging
students to find or draw their own visual-aides can help to reinforce these new
lessons, while also creating a concrete schema of student work for the
classroom to draw from later when discussing how different concepts relate.
* * *
These and more
pictorially vivid assignments can help activate concept imagery for students,
thus giving them a stronger grasp on challenging and accumulative academic
material. With their sharply honed imaginations, students can then make great
gains in school. Their cognition becomes stronger, reading comprehension more
astute, writing more gestalt-driven and sequentially organized, and their
confidence blossoms with this newfound academic stability. Without pictures one
cannot understand, and without understanding one cannot imagine. Both are
necessary for the other therefore the two must be taught in conjunction with
one another. The most successful classrooms of the future will be the classrooms
where educators present information to their students in ways that are visually
active and where students are expected to present their own knowledge with the
same emphasis on imagery.
Works
Cited
Bell, Nanci. Visualizing
and Verbalizing: for Language Comprehension and Thinking, San
Luis
Obispo, CA: Gander Publishing, 2007. Print.
“Core Knowledge – Learn About Us.” Core Knowledge. The Core Knowledge
Foundation,
n.d.
Web. 19 Jan. 2013. http://www.coreknowledge.org/learn-about-us
Enns, James T. The Thinking Eye, The Seeing Brain: Explorations in Visual Cognition, New
York:
W. W. Norton and Company, 2004. Print.
Gardner, Howard. The Disciplined Mind: What All Students
Should Understand, New York:
Simon
& Schuster, 1999. Print.
Hirsch, E. D. Jr. Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs
To Know, Boston: Houghton
Mifflin
Company, 1987. Print.
“Reading Statistics.” Statistic Brain. Statistic Brain
Research Institute, n. d. Web. 19
Jan.
2013.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/reading-statistics/
