1. The EYE and the memory
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Images are the strongest supporters of memory
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News of the world of science
Recalling the meaning of difficult words engages, besides language, three other parts of the brain. Not only does more blood flow into the memorising-centre and the think-centre, but strikingly enough, especially to the visual memory...
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The American researchers, L.Squire and M.Raigle concluded in 1991 that: ‘to remember effectively, the memory of the image is more important than the understanding of it.’
What the eyes see becomes ‘visible’ in our visual cortex. In 1999 S. Kossyln established that the visual cortex is also activated when you try to imagine something with closed eyes.
Moreover, in 2000, it was monitored that the brain recognises much more in the visual cortex than it makes us aware of. This often happens seconds before activating our think-centre in the frontal lobes at the front of the head.
When we think about something, the brain calls up images from the visual memory, which help jog the long-term memory.
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Image memory: endless capacity
People with super memories can repeat long lists of numbers by translating each number into an imaged object.
The Russian Sherashevsky tells us that, as a child of two or three, he could recall Hebrew prayers by converting the sounds into various clouds and specks. These he could later translate back into words. However, remembering so much proved a burden to Sheverahevsky: it is better when the memory selects sharply – keeping the mind clear, as it does for us, normal people.
Our sense of touch is based on imaging: what we feel in darkness we try to convert to images: ‘If this is the edge of the carpet; the light switch must be there’. If we hear noises at night in the living room, we try to imagine what it could be, a burglar or the cat.
Also our thinking activities are based on images. What is familiar requires less concrete images than what is new. Familiar elements are recalled from the long term memory in simplified abstractions; only if necessary will the ‘think-centre’ retrieve more concrete images. New information is often processed in visual images. If information comes verbally or written and not via the eyes, we will make our own images. We do so in our visual cortex, where our visual memory is located.
Images can be compared to indexes in a filing system: they open the memories stored behind. Just think about something from your primary school days. This small exercise might also demonstrade that effective remembering depends more on the memory of (mental) images than on the understanding of them.
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Clarity is not enough: beautiful images motivate people and are more easily recalled
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Brain friendly teaching, so: in line with neurological processes.
First conclusion: always use appealing images as part of any teaching strategy - the memory is heavily based on it.
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Image memory: endless capacity
People with super memories can repeat long lists of numbers by translating each number into an imaged object.
The Russian Sherashevsky tells us that, as a child of two or three, he could recall Hebrew prayers by converting the sounds into various clouds and specks. These he could later translate back into words. However, remembering so much proved a burden to Sheverahevsky: it is better when the memory selects sharply – keeping the mind clear, as it does for us, normal people.
Our sense of touch is based on imaging: what we feel in darkness we try to convert to images: ‘If this is the edge of the carpet; the light switch must be there’. If we hear noises at night in the living room, we try to imagine what it could be, a burglar or the cat.
Also our thinking activities are based on images. What is familiar requires less concrete images than what is new. Familiar elements are recalled from the long term memory in simplified abstractions; only if necessary will the ‘think-centre’ retrieve more concrete images. New information is often processed in visual images. If information comes verbally or written and not via the eyes, we will make our own images. We do so in our visual cortex, where our visual memory is located.
Images can be compared to indexes in a filing system: they open the memories stored behind. Just think about something from your primary school days. This small exercise might also demonstrade that effective remembering depends more on the memory of (mental) images than on the understanding of them.
Nothing seen, yet an image in mind!
Understanding depends upon imaging
Comprehension can often only occur after students are able to construct a mental image of what is meant. The image created is stored in the visual memory for later recall.
If teaching is not being supported visually, then pupils will create their own mental images of the concepts being taught . They do so according to their own experiences, associations and intuitions. Once the student forms a mental image, then the concept is ‘understood’. Correct or not, these mental images become the basis for retention.
Increase efficiency in teaching
Showing the proper images on a large screen at the right moment boosts learning and long-term results improve. Visualising concepts helps students to understand faster and better. Their memory will be based on correct images. Moreover, it is becoming apparent that visualisation can support learning in a variety of ways. The use of moving images such as video and computer animations aid easy understanding: they make optimal use of the co-ordination capacity of the short term memory. For additional memorising large still images are important because these create more permanent impressions in the long term memory. A handy and effective teaching tool for this is the overhead projector just because of its simplicity. In any media-orientated learning environment it allows for instant display; a necessity next to the computer driven beamer projections.
Why is visual imagery so powerful?
Not only is 60% of our brain active during interpretation: it is now evident that not language but images and symbols play a significant role in thinking (article 2) and they simplify the storage and retrieval of information from the memory (article 3). Very often information only reaches the short-term memory and is proccessed there, but in contrast, large projections reach the long-term memory. This opens attractive possibilities in the classroom. Let us first take a look at the brain’s sight system.
The fastest information highway in the brain
The optic nerve consists of at least one million fibres of optic nerve paths, which is much more than the thirty thousand fibres of the auditory nerve. It is even more than the total number of nerve fibres that transmit touch, temperature and pain information from the whole body to the brain. Our sight system is the brain’s greatest information highway, but it has its own shifting system.
Ingenious observation system
Our own brain makes us aware of a tiny fraction of all the visual information it processes. Filtered down is only that which is considered important enough to bother the think-centre with.
It is estimated that one thousandth of all sensory stimuli on a sub-conscious level is processed – just like when driving in traffic. Only one millionth of all visual stimuli entering the eyes reaches our consciousness, our think-centre. The thalamus, the egg-form association centre in the limbic system, co-ordinates all forms of incoming stimuli and is ‘the gateway to our awareness’.
Our brain creates its own reality
Since the start of humankind, incomplete information is supplemented with knowledge already available in the brain (filling in) and to do this effectively was an evolutionary survival skill. Hunters in primeval times seldom consciously noticed the trees in the forest. But small moving yellow or brown spots in colourful foliage triggered the alarm: it could be a deadly predator, or the next meal. Our brain creates a reality which seems relevant based on limited information. Seeing is, therefore, mostly interpretation.
‘Instinctive selection’ in observation
Playing around with evolution
Evolution was not always aimed at learning in school; this explains why motivation is not obvious. At their age students are more interested in other things. This makes teaching a challenge. But: regardless of a natural lack of interest, curiosity can be raised by a large visual projection. It obviously contains ingredients necessary to pass by the partly instinctive selection mechanisms in the visual system. Information presented in this way is able to stimulate the think centre. This one phenomenom makes projectors such powerful instruction tools and only now are we beginning to understand this.
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