Visual Spatial Quotes

As bad as we are at remembering names and phone numbers and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, we have really exceptional visual and spatial memories.

[Patricia Greenfield] concluded that “every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.” Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies has led to the “widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills.” We can, for example, rotate objects in our minds better than we used to be able to. But our “new strengths in visual-spatial intelligence” go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacities for the kind of “deep processing” that underpins “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.

One of the most profound mysteries of autism has been the remarkable ability of most autistic people to excel at visual spatial skills while performing so poorly at verbal skills.

Study after study has shown almost all behavioral and psychological differences between the sexes to be small or nonexistent. Cambridge University psychologist Melissa Hines and others have repeatedly demonstrated that boys and girls have little, if any, noticeable gaps between them when it comes to fine motor skills, spatial visualization, mathematics ability, and verbal fluency.

Time if the inner form of animal sense that animates events-the still frames-of the spatial world. The mind animates the world like the motor and gears of a projector. Each weaves a series of still pictures-a series of spatial states-into an order, into the 'current' of life. Motion is created in our minds by running "film cells" together. Remember that everything you perceive-even this page-is actively, repeatedly, being constructed inside your head. It's happening to you right now. Your eyes cannot see through the wall of the cranium; all experience including visual experience is an organized whirl of information in your brain. If your mind could stop its "motor" for a moment, you'd get a freeze frame, just as the movie projector isolated the arrow in one position with no momentum. In fact, time can be defined as the inner summation of spatial states.

To be fair, it's not just cycling— the term "sporty" isn't used to describe me. I don't run unless something is chasing me, and I have some kind of visual-spatial ball deficiency.

There’s a lot of scientific evidence demonstrating that focused attention leads to the reshaping of the brain. In animals rewarded for noticing sound (to hunt or to avoid being hunted, for example), we find much larger auditory centers in the brain. In animals rewarded for sharp eyesight, the visual areas are larger. Brain scans of violinists provide more evidence, showing dramatic growth and expansion in regions of the cortex that represent the left hand, which has to finger the strings precisely, often at very high speed. Other studies have shown that the hippocampus, which is vital for spatial memory, is enlarged in taxi drivers. The point is that the physical architecture of the brain changes according to where we direct our attention and what we practice doing.

Think of it this way: the object thinkers build the trains, and the spatial visualizers make them run.

Hinton spent most of his adult years trying to visualize higher spatial dimensions. He had no interest in finding a physical interpretation for the fourth dimension. Einstein saw, however, that the fourth dimension can be taken as a temporal one. He was guided by a conviction and physical intuition that higher dimensions have a purpose: to unify the principles of nature. By adding higher dimensions, he could unite physical concepts that, in a three-dimensional world, have no connection, such as matter and energy.

To my surprise, I found that geology demanded a type of whole-brain thinking I hadn't encountered before. It creatively appropriated ideas from physics and chemistry for the investigation of unruly volcanoes and oceans and ice sheets, It applied scholarly habits one associates with the study of literature and the arts - the practice of close reading, sensitivity to allusion and analogy, capacity for spatial visualization - to the examination of rocks. Its particular form of inferential logic demanded mental versatility and a vigorous but disciplined imagination. And its explanatory power was vast; it was nothing less than the etymology of the world.

there is one neuroanatomical anomaly that turns up again and again in savants, including Kim: damage in the brain’s left hemisphere. Interestingly, the exaggerated abilities of savants are almost always in right-brain sorts of activities, like visual and spatial skills, and savants almost always have trouble with tasks that are supposed to be primarily the left-brain’s domain, such as language. Speech defects are extremely common among savants, which is part of the reason that loquacious, well-spoken Daniel seems so extraordinary.

But Berns’s study also shed light on exactly why we’re such conformists. When the volunteers played alone, the brain scans showed activity in a network of brain regions including the occipital cortex and parietal cortex, which are associated with visual and spatial perception, and in the frontal cortex, which is associated with conscious decision-making. But when they went along with their group’s wrong answer, their brain activity revealed something very different. Remember, what Asch wanted to know was whether people conformed despite knowing that the group was wrong, or whether their perceptions had been altered by the group. If the former was true, Berns and his team reasoned, then they should see more brain activity in the decision-making prefrontal cortex. That is, the brain scans would pick up the volunteers deciding consciously to abandon their own beliefs to fit in with the group. But if the brain scans showed heightened activity in regions associated with visual and spatial perception, this would suggest that the group had somehow managed to change the individual’s perceptions. That was exactly what happened—the conformists showed less brain activity in the frontal, decision-making regions and more in the areas of the brain associated with perception. Peer pressure, in other words, is not only unpleasant, but can actually change your view of a problem.

In Europe, the dimensions of physical space seemed compressed. The looming vertical presence of mountains cut me off from the horizon. I'd not lived with that kind of spatial curtailment before. Even a city of skyscrapers is more porous than a snowcapped range. Alps form a solid barrier, an obstacle every bit as conceptual as visual and physical. Alpine bluffs and crags just don't rear up, they lean outwards, projecting their mass, and their solidity does not relent. For a West Australian like me, whose default setting is in diametric opposition, and for whom space is the impinging force, the effect is claustrophobic. I think I was constantly and instinctively searching for distances that were unavailable, measuring space and coming up short.

Finally, Tononi argues that the neural correlate of consciousness in the human brain resembles a grid-like structure. One of the most robust findings in neuroscience is how visual, auditory, and touch perceptual spaces map in a topographic manner onto visual, auditory, and somatosensory cortices. Most excitatory pyramidal cells and inhibitory interneurons have local axons strongly connected to their immediate neighbours, with the connections probability decreasing with distance. Topographically organized cortical tissue, whether it develops naturally inside the skull or is engineered out of stem cells and grown in dishes, will have high intrinsic causal power. This tissue will feel like something, even if our intuition revels at the thought that cortical carpets, disconnected from all their inputs and outputs, can experience anything. But this is precisely what happens to each one of us when we close our eyes, go to sleep, and dream. We create a world that feels as real as the awake one, while devoid of sensory input and unable to move. Cerebral organoids or grid-like substances will not be conscious of love or hate, but of space.; of up, down, close by and far away and other spatial phenomenology distinctions. But unless provided with sophisticated motor outputs, they will be unable to do anything.

While the visual areas of the brain are active, other areas involved with smell, taste, and touch are largely shut down. Almost all the images and sensations processed by the body are self-generated, originating from the electromagnetic vibrations from our brain stem, not from external stimuli. The body is largely isolated from the outside world. Also, when we dream, we are more or less paralyzed. (Perhaps this paralysis is to prevent us from physically acting out our dreams, which could be disastrous. About 6 percent of people suffer from “sleep paralysis” disorder, in which they wake up from a dream still paralyzed. Often these individuals wake up frightened and believing that there are creatures pinning down their chest, arms, and legs. There are paintings from the Victorian era of women waking up with a terrifying goblin sitting on their chest glaring down at them. Some psychologists believe that sleep paralysis could explain the origin of the alien abduction syndrome.) The hippocampus is active when we dream, suggesting that dreams draw upon our storehouse of memories. The amygdala and anterior cingulate are also active, meaning that dreams can be highly emotional, often involving fear. But more revealing are the areas of the brain that are shut down, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (which is the command center of the brain), the orbitofrontal cortex (which can act like a censor or fact-checker), and the temporoparietal region (which processes sensory motor signals and spatial awareness). When the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is shut down, we can’t count on the rational, planning center of the brain. Instead, we drift aimlessly in our dreams, with the visual center giving us images without rational control. The orbitofrontal cortex, or the fact-checker, is also inactive. Hence dreams are allowed to blissfully evolve without any constraints from the laws of physics or common sense. And the temporoparietal lobe, which helps coordinate our sense of where we are located using signals from our eyes and inner ear, is also shut down, which may explain our out-of-body experiences while we dream. As we have emphasized, human consciousness mainly represents the brain constantly creating models of the outside world and simulating them into the future. If so, then dreams represent an alternate way in which the future is simulated, one in which the laws of nature and social interactions are temporarily suspended

For instance, emotional memories are stored in the amygdala, but words are recorded in the temporal lobe. Meanwhile, colors and other visual information are collected in the occipital lobe, and the sense of touch and movement reside in the parietal lobe. So far, scientists have identified more than twenty categories of memories that are stored in different parts of the brain, including fruits and vegetables, plants, animals, body parts, colors, numbers, letters, nouns, verbs, proper names, faces, facial expressions, and various emotions and sounds. Figure 11. This shows the path taken to create memories. Impulses from the senses pass through the brain stem, to the thalamus, out to the various cortices, and then to the prefrontal cortex. They then pass to the hippocampus to form long-term memories. (illustration credit 5.1) A single memory—for instance, a walk in the park—involves information that is broken down and stored in various regions of the brain, but reliving just one aspect of the memory (e.g., the smell of freshly cut grass) can suddenly send the brain racing to pull the fragments together to form a cohesive recollection. The ultimate goal of memory research is, then, to figure out how these scattered fragments are somehow reassembled when we recall an experience. This is called the “binding problem,” and a solution could potentially explain many puzzling aspects of memory. For instance, Dr. Antonio Damasio has analyzed stroke patients who are incapable of identifying a single category, even though they are able to recall everything else. This is because the stroke has affected just one particular area of the brain, where that certain category was stored. The binding problem is further complicated because all our memories and experiences are highly personal. Memories might be customized for the individual, so that the categories of memories for one person may not correlate with the categories of memories for another. Wine tasters, for example, may have many categories for labeling subtle variations in taste, while physicists may have other categories for certain equations. Categories, after all, are by-products of experience, and different people may therefore have different categories. One novel solution to the binding problem uses the fact that there are electromagnetic vibrations oscillating across the entire brain at roughly forty cycles per second, which can be picked up by EEG scans. One fragment of memory might vibrate at a very precise frequency and stimulate another fragment of memory stored in a distant part of the brain. Previously it was thought that memories might be stored physically close to one another, but this new theory says that memories are not linked spatially but rather temporally, by vibrating in unison. If this theory holds up, it means that there are electromagnetic vibrations constantly flowing through the entire brain, linking up different regions and thereby re-creating entire memories. Hence the constant flow of information between the hippocampus, the prefrontal cortex, the thalamus, and the different cortices might not be entirely neural after all. Some of this flow may be in the form of resonance across different brain structures.

French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene has found that the less accurate, “there or thereabouts” bits of math processing uses visual and spatial brain areas, whereas the exact stuff requires the same areas as language processing.2 So to some extent, being a words person and a numbers person are kind of the same thing.

Knowing what we do about London cabbies, we can posit that as people became more dependent on maps, rather than their own memories, in navigating their surroundings, they almost certainly experienced both anatomical and functional changes in the hippocampus and other brain areas involved in spatial modeling and memory. The circuitry devoted to maintaining representations of space likely shrank, while areas employed in deciphering complex and abstract visual information likely expanded or strengthened. We also now know that the changes in the brain spurred by map use could be deployed for other purposes, which helps explain how abstract thinking in general could be promoted by the spread of the cartographer's craft.

The visual-spatial learner thinks primarily with images, learns concepts all at once, sees the big picture, learns best by seeing relationships, and learns complex concepts easily but struggles with easy skills. One possible explanation for dyslexia is that some children who are right-brained learners find it much easier to think about new information and solve problems using their visual-spatial strategies. Over time, they reinforce their own tendencies toward relying on imagery and intuitive thought processes, and fail to develop strong brain pathways for thinking with the sounds of language. Thus,

The oxymoronic term blindsight may seem bizarre, but it accurately describes these individuals’ Shakespearean condition: to see, but not to see. A lesion in the primary visual cortex should make a person blind, and it does deprive such patients of their conscious vision—they assure you that they cannot see anything in a specific part of the visual field (which corresponds precisely to the destroyed area of cortex), and they behave as if they were blind. Incredibly enough, however, when an experimenter shows them objects or flashes of light, they accurately point to them. 10 In a zombielike manner, they unconsciously guide their hand to locations that they do not see—blindsight indeed. Which intact anatomical pathways support unconscious vision in blindsight patients? Clearly, in these patients, some visual information still makes it through from the retina to the hand, bypassing the lesion that makes them blind. Because the entry point into the patients’ visual cortex had been destroyed, the researchers initially suspected that their unconscious behavior arose entirely from subcortical circuits. A key suspect was the superior colliculus, a nucleus in the midbrain that specializes in the cross-registration of vision, eye movements, and other spatial responses. Indeed, the first functional MRI study of blindsight demonstrated that unseen targets triggered a strong activation in the superior colliculus. 11 But that study also contained evidence that the unseen stimuli evoked activations in the cortex—and sure enough, later research confirmed that invisible stimuli could still activate both the thalamus and higher-level visual areas of the cortex, somehow bypassing the damaged primary visual area. 12 Clearly, the brain circuits that take part in our unconscious inner zombie and that guide our eye and hand movements include much more than just old subcortical routes.

Gardner's intelligences are: 1. musical-rhythmic, 2. visual-spatial, 3. verbal-linguistic, 5. bodily-kinesthetic (athleticism, dancing, acting), 6. interpersonal (or "social" intelligence), 7. intrapersonal (or self-knowledge), 8. spiritual (think Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, for example), 9. moral (ability to solve problems within a moral and ethical frame, think King Solomon), and 10. naturalistic (knowledge of nature, plants, animals, and the sorts of things one might need to know to survive in the wilderness). p124

the world between left-brainers (rational, logical people) and right-brainers (the intuitive, artistic ones), but I hadn’t paid much attention to this idea. However, our scans clearly showed that images of past trauma activate the right hemisphere of the brain and deactivate the left. We now know that the two halves of the brain do speak different languages. The right is intuitive, emotional, visual, spatial, and tactual, and the left is linguistic, sequential, and analytical. While the left half of the brain does all the talking, the right half of the brain carries the music of experience. It communicates through facial expressions and body language and by making the sounds of love and sorrow: by singing, swearing, crying, dancing, or mimicking. The right brain is the first to develop in the womb, and it carries the nonverbal

It’s more that he’s organizing the information from those echoes to build a spatial map of his surroundings—a task that vision naturally excels at. Without vision, the brain can still construct similar maps by repurposing the so-called visual cortex into an echo-processing cortex.[*26

Humans abstract and record information in five major ways: with writing, mathematical notation, painting/photography/videography, maps, and clocks—that is, we can abstract and record verbal, numerical, visual, spatial, and temporal information.

Many scientists (the most notable being Albert Einstein) think in visual, spatial, and physical images rather than in mathematical terms and words. (N.B.: That the theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, used an arboreal term to picture the cosmos [i.e., affirming that the universe "could have different branches,"] is a tribute to his [very visual] primate brain.)

the seven learning styles: Social (interpersonal) Solitary (intrapersonal) Visual (spatial) Aural (auditory-musical) Verbal (linguistic) Physical (kinesthetic) Logical (mathematical) Next,

The idea of a personal journey around a site and the interpretation of it is something that Gordon Cullen focuses upon when he describes the concept of ‘serial vision’ in his book Concise Townscape. This concept suggests that the area under study is drawn as a map, and a series of points are then identified on it, each one indicating a different view of the site. These views are then sketched out as small thumbnails, which offer personal impressions of the site’s space. Serial vision is a useful technique to apply to any site (or building), in order to explain how it operates spatially and to identify its significance. The visuals can be created either as a series of sketches or as photographs of the journey, as long as they are assembled and read in sequence.

Most people find it difficult to understand purely verbal concepts. [...] We employ visual and spatial metaphors for a great many everyday expressions [...] We are so visually biased that we call our wisest men visionaries!

In keeping with this approach, the ventral and dorsal visual pathways in the brain have been thought of as the “what” and “where” pathways, generating representations of object structure and spatial relationships, respectively. In the past decade, though, it has been argued that the dorsal stream is more properly thought of as a “how” pathway. The proposed function of this pathway is to serve visually guided actions such as reaching and grasping (for

Here I am taking a psychological characteristic such as the need to know where in the world we are (orientation) and show that when this need was first made visible and expressed graphically the result was a cosmological map. The need for orientation may have been in the first place to relate persons spatially to the physical world in which they lived. But it was equally urgent to represent ideas about mankind’s origin and future. Under the influence of anxiety and stress, outwardly perceptible reality may even have taken second place. The observer then visualized according to his preconceptions. This can still happen. At any rate, some early world maps were a

One study hints that it could, though more work needs to be done. Kids with normal hearing took an American Sign Language class for nine months, in the first grade, then were administered a series of cognitive tests. Their attentional focus, spatial abilities, memory, and visual discrimination scores improved dramatically—by as much as 50 percent—compared with controls who had no formal instruction.

Thus the continuation of the master tutor and willing servant students, the privileging of the visual, the inculcation of absurd modes of behaviour (sleep deprivation, aggressive defensiveness, internal competition), the raising of individuals on to pedestals, all these and more self-perpetuate in schools of architecture around the world, a strange form of interbreeding with tutors passing the architectural gene to students who in turn become tutors who perform the same rituals.

If we think deeply about our childhood, not just about our memories of it but how it actually felt, we realize how differently we experienced the world back then. Our minds were completely open, and we entertained all kinds of surprising, original ideas. Things that we now take for granted, things as simple as the night sky or our reflection in a mirror, often caused us to wonder. Our heads teemed with questions about the world around us. Not yet having commanded language, we thought in ways that were preverbal—in images and sensations. When we attended the circus, a sporting event, or a movie, our eyes and ears took in the spectacle with utmost intensity. Colors seemed more vibrant and alive. We had a powerful desire to turn everything around us into a game, to play with circumstances. Let us call this quality the Original Mind. This mind looked at the world more directly—not through words and received ideas. It was flexible and receptive to new information. [...] Masters and those who display a high level of creative energy are simply people who manage to retain a sizeable portion of their childhood spirit despite the pressures and demands of adulthood. This spirit manifests itself in their work and in their ways of thinking. Children are naturally creative. They actively transform everything around them, play with ideas and circumstances, and surprise us with the novel things they say or do. [...] Masters not only retain the spirit of the Original Mind, but they add to it their years of apprenticeship and an ability to focus deeply on problems or ideas. This leads to high-level creativity. Although they have profound knowledge of a subject, their minds remain open to alternative ways of seeing and approaching problems. They are able to ask the kinds of simple questions that most people pass over, but they have the rigor and discipline to follow their investigations all the way to the end. They retain a childlike excitement about their field and a playful approach, all of which makes the hours of hard work alive and pleasurable. Like children, they are capable of thinking beyond words—visually, spatially, intuitively—and have greater access to preverbal and unconscious forms of mental activity, all of which can account for their surprising ideas and creations.

Correspondence and succession, the two principles which permeate all mathematics—nay, all realms of exact thought — are woven into the very fabric of our number system,” he observes. So, indeed, are they woven into the very fabric of Western logic and philosophy. We have already seen how the phonetic technology fostered visual continuity and individual point of view, and how these contributed to the rise of uniform Euclidean space. Dantzig says that it is the idea of correspondence which gives us cardinal numbers. Both of these spatial ideas — lineality and point of view — come with writing, especially with phonetic writing; but neither is necessary in our new mathematics and physics. Nor is writing necessary to an electric technology.

During the third consultation, Dr. Kline talked about the research of Dr. Hans Asperger from a clinic in Vienna, which was not well-known yet but intriguing. Some personality traits of Bobby aligned with certain symptoms described in his papers, and the fact that the child’s father was almost fifty when he was conceived... “Are you suggesting that Bobby is mentally retarded?” “Oh, no. He’s a normally developed boy intellectually. Quite sharp in some aspects. He has a good visual memory and spatial perception. It’s the emotional intelligence where we encounter a problem.

Research has also shown that when performing language tasks, the autistic subject relies on the visual and spatial areas of the brain more heavily than the neurotypical subject does, perhaps to compensate for a lack of the kind of semantic knowledge that comes with social interaction

Kozhevnikov, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and a researcher at the visual-spatial cognition lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, is one of the first scientists to differentiate between two kinds of visual thinkers: spatial visualizers and object visualizers. In her 2002 landmark

Another type of categorisation some psychologists have come up with is to differentiate the learning styles of individuals as auditory-sequential learning and visual-spatial learning (Silverman, 2002; Webb et al., 2005).

the left hemisphere of the brain is more specialised in processing linguistic and sequential information, while the right hemisphere is better in dealing with visual and spatial information. In other words, learners with the preference of auditory-sequential style predominantly use the left hemisphere, while the learners with the visual-spatial preference mostly use the right hemisphere.

two-thirds of the population possess primarily auditory-sequential characteristics, while the other one-third has predominantly visual-spatial characteristics.

findings that visual-spatial learners, or creative/gifted learners, as they are highly likely to be categorised, are more likely to develop negative images of themselves as well as of society at large, when their requirements/values/ideals and preferences are not met for a prolonged period of time.

Using the characterisation of left and right hemispheric functions of the brain (Silverman, 2002), we can infer that concrete experience and active experimentation tasks mainly use the left hemisphere of our brain, while reflective observation and abstract conceptualisation activities use the right hemisphere; former functions may require detailed descriptions and a sense of time, while the latter probably needs to understand the big picture in the process of integrating and may not need to be concerned about the time or sequencing. In other words, we can infer that those who prefer auditory-sequential learning may prefer the concrete experience and active experimentation stages of the Kolb cycle, while visual-spatial learners may prefer the reflective observation and abstract conceptualisation stages.

Auditory-sequential learners are able to engage in learning despite emotional setbacks, while the learning of visual-spatial learners is heavily dependent on emotional stability.

relation to mathematical abilities, visual-spatial learners are better in mathematical reasoning, while auditory-sequential learners are good in arithmetic.

visual-spatial learners have a tendency to be categorised as gifted and creative individuals who usually show a very high level of emotional and other sensitivities.

visual-spatial learning styles, do not do their best in timed tests and/or multiple-choice question tests, especially if not appropriately constructed (Silverman, 2002). These students are usually better abstract thinkers, and the said type of assessment would, in many cases, not test their abilities appropriately (mostly they are set purely as memory recall test or at least students’ approach them in that way especially because of the time constraints).

The concrete experience stage of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle plays a predominant role in didactic approach, as learners are expected to hurriedly absorb information into their heads through sensory cortex, mostly by auditory means. There will be less time, if at all, expended on reflective observation and abstract conceptualisation stages. All the learners are expected to commit the information divulged to memory in an identical manner promoting conformity ahead of creativity (Kaufman & Gregoire, 2016); there will be no encouragement for unique, personalised knowledge creation internally in the head of the learner. Further, the teacher demonstrates an authoritative role, resembling knowing everything (as an omnipotent god) and attempting to fill the empty heads of students with something disregarding the notions of social-emotional learning altogether. Didactic teaching-learning environments have a negative impact more specifically on visual-spatial or creative/gifted learners, firstly because they usually resist authoritarianism, possibly due to their higher sensitivity levels, and secondly because they tend to grasp knowledge slowly in a deeper sense via reflective observation and abstract conceptualisation phases; visual-spatial learners will be more relaxed and emotionally stable in a nonauthoritative environment with an appropriate pace of presentation that would help them to think/reflect/conceptualise in pictures and objects than pure auditory means.

In relation to these learning styles, psychologists have also identified other associated psychological, neurological, and personality characteristics. The students with preferences for the auditory-sequential learning style are more inclined to have extrovert personalities, while the students who prefer the visual-spatial learning style are inclined to possess introvert personalities. Extrovert personalities are more outgoing, engage in discussions, and respond easily, even with relatively unknown people, and they enjoy social activities with a large number of participants. On the contrary, introverts prefer attending to things on their own with less interaction with others, especially with relatively unknown people, and dislike social activities with large attendance. Auditory-sequential learners are good in analysis and pay more attention to specific detail; they approach solving a complex problem by dividing it into smaller parts. On the other hand, visual-spatial learners are good synthesisers, who can relate different perspectives to form an answer and are better at seeing the big picture or are holistic. As we would expect, auditory-sequential learners deal better with the concept of time and are better organised, while visual-spatial learners are relatively less competent with the concept of time. Auditory-sequential learners think in words and are better in rote memorisation; visual-spatial learners think in pictures and need to relate contextual meanings with pictures and, as a result, struggle with rote memorisation. That is, auditory-sequential learners have better auditory short-term memory, while visual-spatial learners have better visual long-term memory. Further, since they think in pictures, visual-spatial learners take a relatively longer time to process and relate information to contexts; once they do that, this contextual information is retained longer in memory.

There are many forms of attention such as saliency-based, automatic attention, spatial and temporal attention, and feature- and object-based attention. Common to all is that they provide access to processing resources that are in short supply. Because of the limited capacity of any nervous system, no matter how large, it can’t process all of the incoming streams of data in real time. Instead, the mind concentrates its computational resources on any one particular task, such as part of a scene unfolding in front of your eyes, and then switches to focus on another task, such as a simultaneously ongoing conversation. Selective attention is evolution’s answer to information overload. Its actions and properties have been investigated in considerable detail in the mammalian visual system for more than a century.

extremely difficult for the average person to visualize a space of more than three dimensions, since that is the only spatial geometry with which we have had any personal experience.

I was struck by the graphic quality, the fullness of her descriptions. Her parents spoke too of this fullness: “All the characters or creatures or objects Charlotte talks about are placed,” her mother said; “spatial reference is essential to ASL. When Charlotte signs, the whole scene is set up; you can see where everyone or everything is; it is all visualized with a detail that would be rare for the hearing.” This placing of objects and people in specific locations, this use of elaborate, spatial reference had been striking in Charlotte, her parents said, since the age of four and a half—already at that age she had gone beyond them, shown a sort of “staging” power, an “architectural” power that they had seen in other deaf people—but rarely in the hearing.

eXtended Reality (XR) and spatial computing are inherently familiar to humans, with the potential to reshape not only our social interactions but also human-computer interaction.

eXtended Reality (XR) and spatial computing are powerful tools that can both disrupt and revolutionize education, a dual potential that is both exciting and daunting.

I ascribe to others a wide variety of mental states, making fine and subtle discriminations between rather similar states, often ascribing to them states I have seldom if ever experienced myself; how could I do this on the basis of simple analogical reasoning from correlations between behavior and mental states in my own case? As a matter of fact, much of the relevant behavior is such that I can't observe it in my own case: facial expression, for example, is extremely important, and I typically can't observe what sort of facial expressions I am presenting to the world. Of course we have mirrors: but our ancestors, prior to the advent of mirrors, no doubt sometimes knew that someone else was angry or in pain. And we ourselves form these beliefs without adverting to mirrors; who among us carries one with him, or (when in the grip of strong emotion) remembers to consult it in order to establish correlations between his mental states and his facial expressions?...Indeed, tiny babies, presumably at an age at which they form little by way of beliefs of any sort, respond to human-face-like figures differently than to figures made of the same parts but scrambled. Fantz notes that 'It also appears that some of the capacity to establish spatial relations is manifested by the visual system from a very early age. For example, infants of 1-15 weeks of age are reported to respond preferentially to schematic face-like figures, and to prefer normally arranged face figures over 'scrambled' face patterns.

We might think of metaphor as a device belonging to the poetry of words but metaphor can also be non-verbal – visual, spatial, experiential… Metaphor is essential to the poetry of architecture too.

But of course, this infolding of attention doesn’t need to be spatialized or visual. For an auditory example, I look to Deep Listening, the legacy of the musician and composer Pauline Oliveros. Classically trained in composition, Oliveros was teaching experimental music at UC San Diego in the 1970s. She began developing participatory group techniques—such as performances where people listened to and improvised responses to each other and the ambient sound environment—as a way of working with sound that could bring some inner peace amid the violence and unrest of the Vietnam War. Deep Listening was one of those techniques. Oliveros defines the practice as “listening in every possible way to every thing possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds.

There is a reason our schools and offices are plastered with whiteboards. We acquire more information through vision than through all the other senses combined.1 Of the 100 billion neurons in our brains, approximately 20% are devoted to analyzing visual information.2 The visual-spatial learner thinks primarily in images. A study done by psychologist and founder of the Institute for the Study of Advanced Development, Linda Kreger Silverman, suggests that two-thirds of the population have a visual-spatial preference.3 The left hemisphere is sequential, analytical, and time-oriented. The right hemisphere perceives the whole, synthesizes, and apprehends movement in space. For visual-spatial learners, if the right hemisphere is not activated and engaged, then attention will be low and learning will be poor.

and memorizing are actively worked out in the process of solving the cube. Sharpens visual and spatial analysis – Solving the cube requires one to visually analyze the spatial relationships between each piece of the cube so that they can determine their next moves. Improves concentration and attention to details – By constantly practicing to solve the cube, one can improve their resistance to external distractions and learn to focus better on what’s in their hands. Enhances memorization skills – To solve the cube using algorithms, one should be able to memorize the moves and notations exactly as specified and apply them without missing or forgetting one move. Stimulates quick-thinking – Cube solvers, especially speed-cubers, should be

A verb can specify the action or event, describe the trajectory of an action with respect to some reference spatial point, indicate whether an action is completed or ongoing, and select the semantic roles of the participants in an action. Verbs in many but not all languages have a tense, referring to past, present, or future. They express not only the intent but also the mood of the speaker. For example, ambulatory movement can be described by a variety of verbs that refer to different speeds, moods, intentions, directions, and patterns of walking—in essence allowing the listener to visualize the action.70

There are visual, auditory, spatial, and physical means to create emotionally charged artifacts that remind your travelers of key moments along the venture.