Visual Imagery: a discussion

Abstract

It is proposed that individual differences in visual imagery, together with a lack of understanding that others may think in a radically different way in this respect, may have had a profound effect on theories of thought and knowledge from ancient times onwards. From the end of the nineteenth century, however, there has been a growing awareness of these differences, and of the nature of mental imagery, which has been shown to be constructive and perceptual. Such fundamental differences in thinking style might have been expected to have important didactic and heuristic implications, yet attempts to validate measures of this variable in terms of educationally significant correlates have been relatively unsuccessful. Two possible reasons for this are the self‐report nature of most tests, and the failure to distinguish between different aspects of visual material in the validating tasks. It is argued that increased awareness of the issue of mental imagery, among both teachers and pupils, could lead to more flexible teaching methods which take greater account of a pupil's individual style of thought and its interaction with the nature of the learning task.