this is the latest in an embarrassingly long line of threads i have started pertaining to the general topic of learning and cognition. those who have read my other threads are most like collectively groaning and assuming i am at around -10 on reading comprehension to be driven to such levels of desperation. on the contrary, i have just found that studying for this test has just overall increased my intellectual curiosity on a wide variety of topics within the domain of the mind's capabilities.

this would seem fairly obvious (as it is taught to young children), but i realized the other day that i never make any attempts at visualization while reading. i'm pretty good at reading comprehension passages now, but this is mainly just from having a good feel for what will likely be asked and where to look. but i rarely remember much of what i read.

i went through some op-ed pieces reading in my normal fashion, and upon finishing, while clearly grasping the author's intent and conclusion, i realized i remembered very few of his points from the earlier paragraphs. i then read some articles making a conscious effort to form mental images in association with each paragraph. upon the culmination of the reading, i vividly remembered most of the points by recalling the images. in fact, as i did this yesterday, i still remember most of these as i type this.

i realize that this will most likely come as common sense to many here. but i am sure atleast some can relate in never having done this before. i don't know how conducive LSAT passages would be to visualization as many pertain to very abstract, esoteric subjects, but i don't think it could hurt.

supposedly your mind remembers things better as you employ more senses.. visualizing, while not really a sense, probably works in a similar way. It could also help you to understand some of abstract the material. The fractals passage on PT57 is a good example - if you have never heard of fractal geometry, I dont think answering questions is possible w/o visualization. That said, why do you ask these questions on TLS?

i'm not sure i see the problem with it....?

i typically notice substantial improvement in my abilities to do something when i actually understand the mechanisms of the process within my brain. that's no different for LSAT.

well, im just saying, there has got to be a brain science message board out there with people more qualified to anwer your question than those on TLS.

Haha true. I finished reading the OP's topic feeling totally lost. I just... um... study. I don't think about it too much.

I think it's pretty interesting - the question of how to read better. I also visualize what I'm reading and generally lean towards the "dive into the details" side of reading (as opposed to the other extreme of skimming), but I find that with the LSAT passages I had to move more towards a lighter read to keep moving fast enough. I work on reassigning my focus to figuring out the two perspectives in the passage and noting what is used to support which side and where the author falls. The part that I try to get a detailed idea of is what the main issue at play is.

On the cognition front, with kids I found that they learned a lot better if you engaged a lot of different senses as DCD mentions. Turns out most of the population are visual learners, but supplementing that with the other senses seemed to be helpful. Never tried the sense of smell...

Someone above mentioned that visualizing something wasn't really using the sense. Actually, the visual cortex of the brain is responsible interpretation and problem solving in addition to vision. "Visualizing" a problem is using some of the same neural networks as actual vision.

I personally do not try to visualize RC or LR. However, Einstein was reputed to have a larger-than-average visual cortex, and many of his innovations were new ways of "looking" at problems. His relativity theory isn't just a set of formulas; it's a completely novel conception gravity. I have believed for a long time that extremely intelligent people can tap into those visualization skills easier (perhaps without any effort) than most people, and extremely intelligent people probably have more sophisticated visualizations. Have you ever noticed that when you're concentrating hard, your eyes sometimes roll back or lose focus. You kind of get this dazed look. I think this has to do with the fact that your visual cortex is busy "thinking" instead of processing the information you're actually seeing.

Also, Atlas mentioned something about the sense of smell. For some reason, olfaction appears to be intricately tied to memory. Scents can often elicit obscure memories, even years after the original event. I'm not sure that can really help on the LSAT though since it doesn't test information recall in a direct manner.

and its not scratch 'n sniff...

would you say the visual cortex is related to photographic memory?

I'm really not sure. I'm a cellular biologist, so I understand neurophysiology, but I'm not a neuroscientist, and I lack sophisticated knowledge of psychology. I read a study recently that tested Asian kids' recognition of the complex symbols used in eastern languages. The study concluded that the recognition occurred so quickly that some of the information processing must be occurring in the visual cortex. The study's authors believed the visual cortex was involved in problem solving not just "looking."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-coding_theory

reading text along visual lines in addition to propositional lines adds an extra layer of code to whatever it is you want to remember. hence, better recall, and a more engaging read.

hey rocketman:

one area of cognitive science that i think you'd find interesting is that of 'unconcious deliberation' -- figuring stuff out without making a concious effort to figure it out.

i think this phenomenon also lends itself to the LSAT: for instance, i find that when i'm stumped on a hard LR problem, i skip it and return to it later. invariably, i'm able to figure it out after having it 'sit' in my unconcious as opposed to re-reading the stimulus several times. i know its hard to really put this data into a controlled setting (no question is ever the same, plus its hard to control for other confounds) but i believe it works...