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Do You Think in Pictures, or... |
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| Do You Think in Words? |
One person drastically influenced my perception of visual thinkers forever: Dr. Cheri Florance.
When I discovered that Meredith thought in pictures, I of course went looking on the Internet for information. After looking at many things, I finally settled on contacting Dr. Florance because of her compelling work and the fact that like no one else, she was describing my daughter Meredith better than anyone else I found. Dr. Florance discovered a specific type of visual thinker. She calls them "Mavericks" or having a "Maverick Mind." First, I suggest watching this remarkable video about how Dr. Florance was able to reach her "unreachable, unteachable son."
On her website, www.maverickmind.com, Dr. Florance describes The Maverick Mind:
The Maverick Mind, discovered by Dr. Cheri Florance, is a brain that functions at above the 99th percentile in the visual pathway and below the 1st percentile in the verbal pathway. Mavericks have such strong visual thinking that an enemy relationship has formed between picture thinking and words.
Child Mavericks
Often the symptoms of a Maverick are similar to symptoms of Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) or Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). When Mavericks are misdiagnosed from a symptom assessment, they can become frustrated and appear unmotivated. Some Mavericks are diagnosed as gifted in certain situations. When Mavericks are correctly identified and begin appropriate training, they often experience success very quickly.
Adult Mavericks
Adult mavericks often are very visually quick thinkers who can jump ahead to the bottom line or manage a crisis brilliantly. Conversations can seem too slow and unnecessary. We have seen hundreds of medical students who do a superior job performing in a lab and fail when taking a reading-writing test on the same subject, law students who are excellent in practicum and fail the bar exam, executives who can easily see solutions before staff members resulting in friction at work, and spouses that have trouble with intimacy because lingering over a conversation is counter intuitive to them. Visual thinkers are the best of the breed. The most famous thinkers throughout history, Einstein, Churchill, DaVinci, have been primarily visual.
Today, Dr. Florance works with Maverick children and adults all over the world through the "Brain Engineering" program that she developed. Meredith and I worked with Dr. Florance for about six months. Meredith made some significant progress and I received a top-grade education as well!
Lesson number one from Dr. Florance was that there are two main thinking pathways: verbal and visual. The verbal thinking pathway processes information using words and the visual thinking pathway processes information using pictures. Dr. Florance refers to those strong on the verbal side of the curve "Lexicoders" and those on the visual side of the curve "Opticoders." Mavericks are "Super-Opticoders" and can think in dynamic, video-like fashion. Dr. Florance also explained to me that on a bell curve, most people use both verbal and visual thinking pathways, switching back and forth based on which one is most appropriate for the task at hand. The outliers (i.e., Mavericks) on the visual side are those who she terms Maverick Minds and the outliers on the verbal side could include those with Nonverbal (i.e., visual) Learning Disorder. I'll elaborate more on this in future posts.
My daughter has been diagnosed as NLD. The diagnose fits her perfectly. It was a relief.
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested to hear what you have to say on the subject. NLD sounds like "Mavericks but on the Opposite End". My daughter is indeed in the gifted percentile verbally and very low on the visuals, in accordance with the criteria for NLD.
I am so glad you received the diagnosis that fits your daughter. It really is a relief once you know what you're dealing with, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteI am not an expert in NLD, but indeed it does appear like those diagnosed with NVD are Mavericks but on the verbal thinking side of the bell curve exactly as you say. In fact, that is exactly what Dr. Florance would say. They are the extreme Lexicoders who think primarily in words vs. the extreme Opticoders who think primarily in pictures. Dr. Florance said of herself that she thinks completely in words. She doesn't see pictures when she dreams nor can she picture what her children look like. Rather, she dreams in sound--in conversations--and she described in her book that she would think about the experts she knew talking to each other when she was trying to solve a problem with her son.
I have three friends who have a child diagnosed with NLD and it is almost funny how on almost every point, they are opposite from my very visual daughter. As a common denominator, they are generally good at algebra (more like a language), poor at geometry (visual-spatial)...very talkative with a good command of English...experience difficulty observing visual cues...not usually big fans of puzzles, legos, some other creative areas.
I always thought it would be a little easier to understand what Nonverbal Learning Disorder meant if it was called Visual Learning Disorder, although I don't know if that does it justice. But, in that way, it would make a little more sense as to why geometry, for example, generally gives those with NLD trouble. My one friend's son was an A student (as many of those with NLD are since school is geared much more to the verbal abilities of students than visual abilities). He was scheduled to take geometry one particular year and I told my friend that he was going to struggle in geometry and sure enough, he was failing from the start. One idea I had was to get his geometry textbook online through the Readings for the Blind and Dyslexic. My thought was that we would be much better off hearing a description of geometry rather than learning it by looking at the pictures. Unfortunately, they never tried this idea, so I didn't get to see if it worked.
But in other areas, you could try to apply the exact opposite of what I talk about on this blog. For instance, if your daughter has a meltdown or is very stressed after a long day, she could listen to music or listen to a book on tape? For my daughter, a visual activity calms her down and too much audio drains her.
Another thing that comes to mind is that visual Mavericks think in associations, which is irrespective of time. They are great brainstormers. Lexicoders, on the other hand, think in a step-by-step manner. I'm assuming that your daughter would respond much better with getting information in steps from beginning to end, without overloading them with too much extraneous information? That's just a guess. I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Opticoder Mavericks need to know the big picture first in order to know what to connect what they're hearing/learning to what they already know.
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Hi I just ran across this blog and am curious about your experience with ebrainlabs. Did you feel it was worthwhile? It seems you do. Would you be willing to contact me via email? glexchick at gmail dot com. Thanks so much.
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