

Ask HN: How much of a visual learner are you? - almondmilk

Hi HN,<p>I&#x27;ve found that it&#x27;s difficult for me to process spoken words and translate them into concepts I understand. When asked a question about anything remotely non-trivial, I often struggle with understanding the content of the question until I write the spoken words down. Further, I have a much greater shot at quickly processing and retaining the content if I draw or utilize a visual. I can retain visual concepts for years, while non-visual concepts fade away much sooner.<p>If a presentation or discussion is accompanied by visuals, I still have trouble. I believe this to be because much of the content, in these contexts, is still verbal. The visuals are used to assist with, rather than fully replace, the spoken word.<p>My current conclusion is that I am much more of a purely visual learner than most. Does any of the above ring true for others?<p>If it does, how have you optimized for this learning style?<p>If not, how does your learning style differ from this?
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Broken_Hippo
I'm not solely a visual learner: I learn best with some sort of hands on
activity or by stimulating multiple senses during learning. Lectures, even
with visual aids, often are very difficult for me to sit and learn from: Notes
aren't generally enough, but I can doodle and take lighter notes retaining
more (teachers in school didn't like this all that much). I generally liked
writing research papers because I could work with the concepts and things I
had read on paper: Working with the words and editing and things like that
tended to make a better understanding of the subject. I do this for fun at
times - for example, I've been studying Chaos Magick and wound up answering my
own questions in writing so i could try understanding (and passed that onto
someone with actual knowledge to correct me if I am wrong). Foreign language
is all about use and the right input - pronunciation takes me a while to
catch, but it is easier if I can hear the word while seeing it written (lots
of times), which allows me to better understand syllables and figure out the
patterns, with occasional explanations of what the mouth is doing. Seeing +
hearing + use. Visual cues I can project or imagine them in front of me, and
mentally manipulate it. Sure, the details differ from the real thing, but it
still helps.

I used to think I was a visual learner as well - until I realized it was the
doodling/notetaking movement that got me to pay attention more than the notes
themselves, though I kept up the notetaking habit to a point because it proved
useful to refresh my mind later on.

And sometimes I think I just have to make sure to not be bored while learning
- note taking or drawing could just let my mind focus on words. In addition,
science has debunked this a few times (sorry for not having links) - which
makes me wonder if it isn't more akin to horoscopes... if you think you are a
visual learner, it is easy to notice things you've learned well visually and
also pick out things that went wrongly that were non-visual: Decide you are
something else, and you might see the same pattern - a brain trick more than
anything.

~~~
almondmilk
Thank you for the reply! This helps me think about learning in some new ways.

