Understanding the Statistics of Visual Learners

FACT: Approximately 65 percent of the population is visual learners. FACT: The brain processes visual information 60,000 faster than text. FACT: 90 percent of information that comes to the brain is visual. FACT: 40 percent of all nerve fibers connected to the brain are linked to the retina. FACT: Visual Literacy is the ability to encode (create a visual language) & decode (understand a visual language). FACT: Visual aids in the classroom improve learning by up to 400 percent. FACT: Students who are twice exceptional (2e) are often visual learners. 1. It is a lot less time consuming to watch a movie than it is to read a book plus you can do it all at once. When reading a book you have to keep stopping and starting where you left off. 2. In a movie you can see exactly what is going on (i.e. action, drama, romance); whereas in a book you really have to use your imagination.

Time is of the essence – I read a lot and I read fast but if I were to spend my entire weekend doing nothing but reading I’d be pushing to finish three novels (admittedly I read fantasy and they tend to be huge but still). If I spend the entire weekend watching movies (unless I’m watching Lord of the Rings or something equally epic) I can probably knock over about twelve movies. Movies skip out a lot of detail that appears in books, plus they don’t need to describe scenes to you, they just flash a picture and move on. They are quicker in conveying the story.

Special Effects – Now it has been pointed out that our imagination has no limitations and special effects do so things that sound really good in books sometimes look quite ridiculous in movies. However, my imagination is limited by my sense of reality and so when a book has a car crash I see a little ding and a bit of broken glass, where as a movie will usually just blow the car up in a spectacular show of carnage. Logically I know the car probably wouldn’t blow up but watching it on the screen I can go with it. Reading about...