[ExI] Bandwidth of Information Gleaning

[Anne Corwin]

Jef said:

"For example, my thinking is extremely visual/analytical (I actually think in terms of graphs and geometric shapes) 

My thinking is...difficult to describe.  It is strongly visually biased, but I'm also prone to synesthesia, so there's some degree of sensory mixing in there as well.  Graphs and shapes and diagrams definitely feature prominently, though -- frequently, even writing for me is a process of "looking" at the diagrams in my mind's eye and attempting to describe them as best as possible.  My brain seems to operate in "layers", wherein the most basic cognitive layer is largely non-linguistic.  The layer on top of that is quasi-linguistic -- that is, there are a lot of words there, but they don't necessarily represent anything.  

Then the layer on top of *that* is linguistic -- when I am writing, I am basically "pulling" concepts up from the basic cognitive layer through the quasi-linguistic layer and fashioning them into something with some chance of being understood by someone who isn't me.  And the linguistic layer is very text-biased as opposed to speech-biased; text gets "in" and "out" more easily than speech does.  But the right diagram or graph has the potential to bypass the linguistic layer(s) entirely.  Which is always nice.

Jef said: 

"so I tend to use phrases like "I see" and "in the bigger picture" and "what do you think" and "does that make sense"

I haven't examined my writing to see what sorts of phrases I tend to use, but I've heard the theory before about people's vocabulary choices and defaults reflecting their primary sensory modalities.  It does make sense in some respects, but I haven't tested it myself -- maybe now that you've reminded me of it, I will start paying attention to it.  It (the theory) does come across as a bit pop-sciencey, but there could be something to it.

- Anne



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