Visual thinking helps students understand new concepts and retain knowledge, but what’s the brain function behind visual learning? How does visual information help a student’s brain create meaning and knowledge? Recently I watched a speech by Tom Wujec at a TED conference in February 2009 discussing this exact process.1 In the first six minutes, he explains how visual diagrams help our brains identify key ideas, create meaning, and create collaborative knowledge. He applies this in a business setting, but I think it provides insight into how the brain functions and why visual learning works.
Meaning Begins In the Primary Visual Cortex
Wujec says that the origin of meaning begins in the primary visual cortex with three main parts of the brain. The first part of the brain is the ventral stream, which identifies and defines the objects that we see. Next, is the dorsal stream, which locates objects physically in space. Lastly, the limbic system is responsible for our emotional response to images.
It’s important to point out that when students create visual diagrams on paper or with software like Inspiration®, Kidspiration® and Webspiration Classroom™ service, they awaken the senses in the primary visual cortex. Students identify images in graphic organizers to define their symbolic meaning with the ventral stream. In the dorsal stream, the physical location of the picture contributes to the logic of the image and its meaning as a part of a greater whole. The subject matter behind the diagrams trigger individualized meaning for students as the limbic system processes information.
Graphics Create Visual Logic
Wujec adds that an effective image causes our eye to dart around to detect the meaning in pictures, connections, colors, patterns, lines, location, etc. He says that visual images catch our attention and we generate meaning through visual logic. Visual logic is found in graphic organizers, webs and other diagrams, that create meaning by graphically showing ideas, concepts and their relationships to each other. Students’ focus on the images and the arrangement of the information helps to develop understanding and clarify thinking.
How to Use Visual Diagrams
Lastly, Wujec says use visual images to
- clarify thinking
- interact with concepts
- and collaborate with others to create shared meaning.
Pictures and visual diagrams that students view in their projects help them to identify an object, locate its physical space and feel its associated emotion. This process of generating visual meaning helps students to clarify their thinking. When students’ eyes dart from concept to concept in a graphic organizer, they are interacting and engaging in the material. The active experience helps students to better grasp the information. In a past post, I discussed how Webspiration Classroom helps students to communicate and collaborate with visual images. The collaboration on diagrams helps student groups to collectively clarify thinking and engage in concepts.
The visual cortex is a powerful brain function behind visual sensory intake that allows students to generate meaning. Using visual learning software jump starts and taps into this science to help students learn new ideas, create knowledge and retain information.
See you next week!
Mona Westhaver
President and Co-founder, Inspiration Software
- “Tom Wujec on 3 Ways the Brain Creates Meaning | Video on TED.com.” TED: Ideas worth Spreading. Web. 29 Nov. 2010. <http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/tom_wujec_on_3_ways_the_brain_creates_meaning.html>. [↩]
