Measuring Individual Differences in Visual and Verbal Thinking Styles
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Warford, N., and Kunda, M. (2018). Measuring individual differences in visual and verbal thinking styles. In Proceedings of the 40th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Madison, WI. 2666-2671. Measuring Individual Differences in Visual and Verbal Thinking Styles Noel Warford ([email protected])1 Maithilee Kunda ([email protected]) Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Vanderbilt University 400 24th Ave S, Nashville, TN 37212 USA Abstract Among typically developing individuals, people can suc- cessfully be instructed to use one modality over another to Do people have dispositions towards visual or verbal think- ing styles, i.e., a tendency towards one default representational solve the same given task (Reichle et al., 2000). Investiga- modality versus the other? The problem in trying to answer tions of the learning styles hypothesis suggest that a person’s this question is that visual/verbal thinking styles are challeng- preferred visual/verbal thinking style, i.e., “default” represen- ing to measure. Subjective, introspective measures are the most common but often show poor reliability and validity; neu- tational modality, is distinct from visual/verbal cognitive abil- roimaging studies can provide objective evidence but are in- ity, i.e., the proficiency with which a person can solve visual trusive and resource-intensive. In previous work, we observed or verbal problems, and also from visual/verbal learning pref- that in order for a purely behavioral testing method to be able to objectively evaluate a person’s visual/verbal thinking style, erences, i.e. whether a person prefers to receive visual or ver- 1) the task must be solvable equally well using either visual bal instructional materials (Mayer & Massa, 2003). or verbal mental representations, and 2) it must offer a sec- These observations collectively raise a very important ondary behavioral marker, in addition to primary performance measures, that indicates which modality is being used. We question: Do individuals indeed have dispositions towards collected four such tasks from the psychology literature and visual or verbal thinking styles, in the sense that they reli- conducted a small pilot study with adult participants to see the ably exhibit a tendency towards one default representational extent to which visual/verbal thinking styles can be differenti- ated using an individual’s results on these tasks. modality versus the other? Many interesting questions follow from this one. To what Keywords: Cognitive styles; mental representation; process- ing style; representational modality extent do people with certain cognitive conditions like autism show different distributions over thinking styles than do typ- Motivation ically developing individuals? Do these different thinking styles represent important etiological subtypes, i.e. “cogni- I think in pictures. Words are like a second language to tive phenotypes” within autism or other conditions (Charman me. I translate both spoken and written words into full-color et al., 2011)? To what extent do differences in thinking styles movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my affect how students learn from different instructional mate- head.... Language-based thinkers often find this phenomenon rials (Pashler et al., 2008)? How do individual differences difficult to understand, but in my job as an equipment de- in the flexibility with which people can switch away from signer for the livestock industry, visual thinking is a tremen- their default representational modality contribute to overall dous advantage. (Grandin, 2008, p. 3) metacognitive abilities? (And so on.) Temple Grandin is a well-known professor of animal science The Problem: How to Measure? who is also on the autism spectrum. She has observed that she The problem in trying to answer this question is that is a “visual thinker,” in the sense that she has a disposition visual/verbal thinking styles are challenging to measure. towards using visual mental representations instead of ver- Subjective, introspective measures do exist, such as the bal ones. She still has access to verbal representations (e.g., Verbalizer-Visualizer Questionnaire (VVQ), which asks test language), but at least introspectively, her dominant mode of takers to agree or disagree with statements such as, “My thinking seems to be visual, not verbal (Grandin, 2008). dreams are extremely vivid,” and “I don’t believe that anyone Other introspective accounts of this kind of “visual think- can think in terms of mental pictures” (Richardson, 1977). ing style” in autism have been documented (Hurlburt et al., Many studies have attempted to use these and other subjec- 1994). In addition, there is objective evidence from both be- tive measures to study visual/verbal thinking styles and to havioral and neuroimaging studies that at least some individ- relate these differences to other variables. However, while uals on the autism spectrum do use visual mental represen- introspection can be valuable for studying human cognition, tations for certain tasks that are solved verbally by typically these approaches often exhibit poor reliability and validity developing controls (Kunda & Goel, 2011). Other evidence (Antonietti & Giorgetti, 1998). from autism seems to suggest that individuals on the spec- An objective measure of visual/verbal thinking styles can trum may show a more bimodal distribution across extremes be obtained by observing a person’s brain activity using fMRI of visual and verbal thinking than do typically developing in- or other neuroimaging techniques, as visual mental represen- dividuals (Joseph et al., 2002). tations are instantiated in the visual processing regions of the 1Present address: Department of Computer Science, Oberlin Col- brain, and verbal mental representations are likewise instan- lege, 10 N. Professor Street, Oberlin, OH 44074 USA tiated in auditory and linguistic processing regions (Reichle 2666 et al., 2000; Kana et al., 2006). However, neuroimaging is hand, they cannot recall digits as well under visual suppres- resource-intensive and cannot easily scale to large numbers sion but can under verbal suppression, then they are likely to of participants or flexible testing settings. be doing digit recall visually. Researchers have repeatedly called for improvements in Task 2. Serial picture recall. If someone shows you a series this area, emphasizing the need for objective, reliable, easy- of object pictures, and you are asked to repeat the objects to-administer measures (Riding & Calvey, 1981) and sug- back, do you use your visual or verbal memory buffer to store gesting that certain negative results in the literature surround- the information? There is evidence that people can use either ing the idea of visual/verbal thinking styles may be due to the visual to verbal representations for this task, and in particular, paucity of effective measures in the past (Kaufmann, 1981; there is a developmental progression from visual to verbal Pashler et al., 2008). As a result of this gap, we know surpris- representations in typically developing children (Hitch et al., ingly little, in terms of objective and reliable research find- 1989). ings, about individual differences in visual/verbal thinking The secondary behavioral marker is obtained by giving styles, including whether most individuals indeed even have people lists of objects that are either visually similar, phono- dispositions towards a “default” representational modality. logically similar, or not similar along either dimension. If a person’s accuracy decreases for visually similar stimuli but Our Approach not for phonologically similar stimuli, then it is likely that In order for a task or testing method to be able to objectively they are using visual representations, which would be sus- evaluate a person’s visual/verbal thinking style, the task must ceptible to inter-stimuli interference from visually similar ob- meet two key criteria (Kunda & Goel, 2011): jects. If, on the other hand, a person’s accuracy decreases for A. The task must be solvable equally well using either phonologically similar stimuli but not for visual, then it is visual or verbal mental representations. If a task can only likely that they are using verbal representations for the task. be solved using one type of representation, then a person’s Task 3. Arithmetic task switching. Task-switching is an performance on that task can only reflect the level of their executive ability often studied using arithmetic, i.e., a per- ability on that particular task, not their thinking style. For son alternately adds and subtracts pairs of digits. Arithmetic example, a person might have a strong visual thinking style, task-switching is often thought to involve verbal cognitive re- but when given no other choice, can switch to using verbal sources, but there is evidence that people can use either visual mental representations. Only by providing both options can a or verbal resources for the task (Kunda & Goel, 2011). task measure modality preferences/biases. As with serial digit recall, task switching is often stud- B. The task must offer a secondary marker of some kind, ied using the dual task paradigm, by giving people either vi- in addition to primary performance measures, that indi- sual or verbal suppression tasks and then observing the ef- cates which modality is being used. Neuroimaging meth- fects of each type of suppression on performance (Emerson ods, for example, provide these secondary markers in the &