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As time passes, we hear words associated with these images: remember baby going from “ga ga,
goo goo” to associating sounds with people and things around them with that first “ma ma” or
“dad a”?

As baby grows she may be part of the 20% continue to recognize ideas by an image (picture
thinker) she senses for it. Another 20% do not see the image, instead they hear the word (word
thinker) – like a radio and maybe what the word looks like. Most of us are in the remaining 60%
(20 + 20 + 60 = 100) the population. Thus we sense with both TV/image, and Radio/sound. Are
able to imagine ideas? Try this: Picture an elephant; do you see an animal or the word? Many of
us, of the 60%, see both word and picture. Yet some ‘picture thinkers’ sense an image, ‘word
thinkers’ hear the word or see the letters that make that word.

Those of us for whom dominant picture thinking is natural, while bright eager curious persons,
will have problems in learning and life. Why? Most classrooms rely on word-based teaching and
learning; in this setting the 20% who naturally think in pictures can experience trouble. How?
Let’s see what happens when we think of some ‘easy’ words: Picture a ‘lion’; you may see a real
one or another image like a cartoon one. (I always see the Lion King). Now picture a ‘how’ – do
you see an image or the word? Try ‘who’; do you see a picture for this idea or the word? When a
word does not prompt a picture that represents what it means, then the thinker that must see a
picture when hearing a word to understand what that word represents, sees nothing…she ‘draws a
blank’.
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Picture thinkers trying to figure out what picture goes with words like ‘the’, ‘that’, ‘of’, ‘how’,
‘who’, who know they are as smart as their classmates, feel frustrated or confused that everyone
else can read and write so easily, while they can’t and they don’t know why. This picture thinking
ability can be at the root of dis-abilities like reading, writing, comprehension, ADD – for children
in school or grownups in the adult world. Picture thinkers succeed in classes and career fields
that rely on their gifts like art, drama, music, discussion-based debate, hands-on science, project
based courses, because of their way of thinking, not in spite of it.
Are you a word- or picture-thinker or are you in the majority for whom both come naturally?
Next time you or someone you know don’t seem to ‘get the picture’ consider the possibility that
they are picture or nonverbal thinker, navigating a word or verbal thinkers world.
Tom West’s book "Seeing What Others Cannot See" Linda Kreger Silverman’s book, "Upside Down Brilliance
– The Visual Spatial Learner", and Ron Davis’ book, "The Gift of Dyslexia" all share this idea and
suggest ways picture thinking is natural and how to use this gift in a world that seems geared to
word thinkers 100% of the time.

Try this scenario – Youngster and mom have different pictures for a word…
A three year old put his shoes on by himself. His mother noticed the left was on the right foot.
She said, “Son, your shoes are on the wrong feet.” He looked up at her with a raised brow and
said, “Don’t kid me, Mom. I know they’re my feet.”

April showers..."Bring May flowers" OR "May bring flowers" 

AHA! you caught that. You saw and read the same three words, ‘may’ ‘flowers’ ‘bring’, yet their message is different based on the order you read them in.  Your picture varies with each sequence of words.  Continue reading beyond these three words and the additional information you gather will help you adjust your picture so you might understand what the writer intended with those three words.

Imagine yourself a youngster who attends a good school, has a good teacher, parents and homelife, yet with reading the ‘good’ stops.  You cannot fill the expectation that those black marks on the page – letter symbols you’ve learned the names of --  will translate to words you will say and know the same each day. 
 
How frustrating.  Something must be wrong.  Sometimes, if these are isolated experiences that are the exception and not the rule, isolating a confusion or two about specific letters and sounds will fill a gap from a missed lesson or simple confusion. 
 
However if enough factors as simple as described above exist and continue, difficulties growing out of this frustration will sorely test not only the student’s stamina, but all associated with her or him.  Take the situation seriously.  If you feel something is not right, many sources exist for you investigate to guide you in keeping a learning difference from becoming a learning disability. 
 
Sue Hall’s book "Fish Don't Climb Trees" reminds us of the range of talents we bring to what we do.  Imagine a monkey prize swimmer and that fish making her way up the trunk of that tree.  She reminds us that limiting reading instruction to sounding out and memorizing is like expecting that fish to climb the tree. 
 
Do not just ‘consider the possibility’, but ‘EMBRACE the possibility’ that by learning more about your child’s way of thinking and doing you can better celebrate your child’s talents, feed their passions, and work to cultivate their emotional as well as intellectual growth – in the end you will have raised an empowered and enthusiastic learner.
 
May April showers bring May flowers for you and yours.  

I provide programs of the Davis Dyslexia Association International (www.dyslexia.com) and the Davis Autism Approach (www.davisautism.com).  In my 30 years experience before learning about Davis, I used the best word thinking approaches to help the learner put-together or take-apart sounds to read and spell words. Before the Davis approach recognized the value of employing our natural picture thinking, all dyslexia approaches relied on relating sounds and symbols.  We know that one size does not fit all, thus one way of doing things will not help everyone. 

With dyslexic thinkers, using word-thinking approaches is like trying to download Apple into Microsoft, both being wonderful systems.  Educators and parents can be fooled when a person gains the skill of recognizing and naming words, yet lacks understanding, remains confused and frustrated, often with the feeling of dislike for the activity, upset stomach, frustration when all their trying results in little success. 
 
With autistic thinkers, the world they live in feels made up of random pieces – and each piece is in the ‘now’.  When stuck in the ‘now’, many experiences surrounding them can be overwhelming or be the opposite and not register in their consciousness. The resulting behaviors look like sensory sensitivities and ADD hyper- or hypo- attentiveness. 

The Davis approach is different from every other approach – A fully certified Davis Provider gives the learner credit for being smart in a picture thinking way and provides them with tools to rely on the certainty that comes with knowing how to make sense of language whether reading, spelling or writing. 

It took me decades to discover and two years for each certification with the Davis Dyslexia and Autism Approaches to offer learners a way to ‘make sense’.  Don’t wait until you’ve tried other approaches only to realize that no matter how you try to get the information into the brain, confusion and anxiousness turn on a stream of uncertain possible outcomes picture-thinkers are capable of creating in their multidimensional way;  this results is uncertainty about what is accurately occurring. 

If you and your child and teacher are not getting expected results, consider the possibility that using the only approach relying on getting to the root of struggles using their creative, picture thinking intelligence will be their way of ‘making sense’.

Q- My son had such a hard time learning to tell time. But the problem didn’t end there – even now, he has such a distorted sense of time and he tends to spend too much time on a minor part of a task, leaving no time for the remainder of the job.

A- When a person struggles to correctly decode while reading aloud, anyone can guess that this person probably has a learning disability. Yet beyond struggles with reading, having a distorted sense of time or losing track of time on a regular basis is another aspect common when using picture thinking which we can resolve by using the learner’s strengths.

Disorientation (not getting the true facts from one’s surroundings) is a mental state that some learners use to solve problems and get different perspectives on real-world puzzles. However, without control of this same skill the learner will experience a distorted sense of time. Sleep is an excellent example of disorientation; it is common to wake up confused by how much time has actually passed.

Hyper focus is another facet of disorientation – when a person tunes out the rest of the environment in order to focus on one thing only. Hyper focus has its place in sports and many other places, but when a person repeatedly fails to complete tasks or assignments because he spends too much time on one step of the job, he needs to learn how to control his focus and better understand time. 
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What to do: Introduce the Davis focus and self-regulation tools of orientation point / alignment, energy dial, and release. These tools increase the learner’s self-awareness.

With the three decades of ‘time’ I’ve worked with Learning Different children and adults, learning about the role of distortion of time that comes with ‘disorientation’ explains how struggling is often part of the profile of smart learners who struggle.  Once we, as learners, realize our problems arise from how smart we are, the entire picture changes from needing to be fixed to being able to manage on our own. 

Contact us to determine options so you or your learner can succeed because of, not despite, your natural way of thinking. 

As Will Rogers once said about wasting time: “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” 

Q -  My children are great workers and players.  They work hard at doing what they’re asked to do, but sometimes getting their attention is difficult.  As a matter of fact, my daughter’s teacher tells me that she daydreams too much.  What can or should I do about this? 

A - Everyone daydreams sometime.  Daydreams don’t just happen; they are most likely prompted by an event  we see, hear, smell, feel, or taste, or memories that bring us back to something.  The triggering event turns our imagination on. 
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Other triggers – curiosity, boredom, confusion, and fear – may bring new or old ideas to mind.  During the time that we are seeing what our imagination shows us, the real world drops away, as our brain receives our imagined scene.  
 
Most of us use our picture thinking daily.  Because picture thinking is subliminal – faster than a person can be aware of – you may not be aware that you think in pictures. You will simply have a rich sense of ideas; call this intuition or nonverbal intelligence. 

Sometimes a person’s tendency for picture thinking is a cause for alarm as with a child whose parent brought her to me because of her ability to ‘see things’ and her poor reading ability. Sure enough, the daughter told me that I was surrounded by a field of pink.  What a relief to both parents and child to understand  her ability to ‘see things’ occurs when her imagination/mind’s eye turns on. Through our work together she realized she controls her mind’s eye on/off switch.

Simply stated, daydreaming is an automatic action for strong creative picture thinkers.  It is a survival solution when trying to solve the confusion accompanying a situation or a new word when reading.  Understanding how it feels when daydreaming occurs, allows her to shut off her imagination so her brain will see only the real letters so she stands a better chance of recognizing the word. 

Embrace your daughter’s daydreaming, provide her the perspective that daydreaming is not BAD, but a good ability of her great brain.  Check to see which of the triggers fits when she daydreams:  Curiosity, Confusion, Boredom, Fear. 

This automatic picture thinking can be interpreted as disability, rather than the ability that picture thinking is. If the help she receives in reading, spelling, writing, or understanding the spoken word is tedious and discouraging for her, consider the possibility that providing her the tools and understanding that come with respecting her picture thinking will give her control and pride about her way of thinking.
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Our perspective creates what we see.   A three year old put his shoes on by himself.  His mother noticed the left shoe was on the right foot.  She said, “Son, your shoes are on the wrong feet.”  He looked up at her with a raised brow and said, “Don’t kid me, Mom.  I know  they’re my feet.”   

Q- It drives me crazy that though my daughter can read at grade level, she substitutes little words; for example: ‘for’ and ‘from’, ‘was’ for ‘saw’, ‘of’ and ‘off’.   Will it help if I have her memorize lists of similar words so she can watch out for them?  

A- In the world of thinking, some of our brains see and hear words when receiving language – think of it as listening to a radio and seeing a stream of letters and words.  When our mind processes thoughts in this way we are using our ‘word thinking’. Likewise, another way the brain receives language is by creating scenarios of images brought to mind – this can happen so quickly that our imagination may not ‘see’ the scenes but have a sense of or intuition about the idea.  This rich world of experiencing ideas sometimes in multisensory ways involving how the scene may feel, smell, sound, taste is what is meant when we are using our ‘picture thinking’.  Most of us utilize a mixture of both ‘word’ and ‘picture’ thinking, though some of us think solely with words and others do not see or hear words but think solely with pictures. 
 
Try this experiment – what comes to mind when you see this set of letters – e l e p h a n t.  Most of us will have some version of a large grey animal. Now see what comes to mind when you see this set of letters – w a s. Most of us will see the letters ‘was’. One of these words – elephant -- generates an association with a picture or experience and the other - was – does not automatically call up an association. Asking our picture thinkers to differentiate words that are similar like was/saw by looking at sets of letter symbols is like you and I trying to differentiate language written in characters from other languages.  Chinese and Arabic characters come to mind, as do advanced statistical and mathematical formulas. To be certain about language, picture thinkers need all three parts of a word: what the word looks like – it’s spelling, what the word sounds like – its pronunciation, and how the word is pictured – its meaning. 
 
A 9 year old girl who struggled with reading at her grade level, often substituted words. Many were words that looked alike as when she said ‘proud’ for ‘poured’. She has a very strong listening vocabulary, (meaning words she understands when hearing them) so she had choices of words she’d heard to match with the mix of letters that made up that word.  When seeing printed words she has a choice/guess about which to say. When she matches the word with the meaning, pronunciation, and spelling, (all 3 parts of the word) the word becomes part of her reading vocabulary.  

The stronger the word thinker, the more apt to respond memorizing the look and sound of spelling words thus using word lists may work for the stronger word thinkers. However, word lists, containing only two parts of the words, sound and look, leave out the meaning/picture which then leaves behind those stronger in picture thinking.  Utilize the meaning of words to provide ALL learners the opportunity for certainty. Without activating the third part of language – meaning – the student may be memorizing only two parts of language – spelling, and pronunciation.   To include all thinkers to participate in the job of language remember to include all three parts to create certainty.

Even before reading the words in this book, the illustrations may seem familiar. This is true because illustrator Jim Durk continues to make use of the artist facet of his strong non-verbal intelligence as he did when he created Clifford of Clifford the Big Red Dog and Thomas in Thomas and Friends.    Likewise, the author, Andrew Jordan Nance, utilizes his great imagination to portray the surplus of attention that often accompanies the strong non-verbal thinkers for whom the Davis program makes all the difference in the world. 

As shown on our Thinking Style page, 80% of us possess the capacity to think about things in a creative way.  Our Characteristics page and AD(H)D page show that sometimes that roaming creativity can be like a Puppy Mind.

Too often this free-range attention spread throughout the environment is deemed a negative, a dis-ability, something to be corrected.  In fact, when strong nonverbal thinkers realize this distractibility is an indicator of what is right with them, not what is wrong with them, they can take pride in their 'puppy mind' and use it to their advantage.    
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Contact Elsie to investigate how behaviors considered Attention DEFICIT can be more accurately described as Attention SURPLUS.  By learning how to take advantage of a natural way of thinking, pride and responsibility replaces shame often associated with Puppy Mind.  

After years of searching and using the best approaches in pubic, private schools and universities, I found the missing piece to serve, and save, smart frustrated learners through my DDAI and DAA training and certification.  Years before, in 1982, Ronald D Davis began training others to 'See what others cannot see - because of the advantage of their picture-thinking brains'.  In 1997, fifteen years later, Tom West wrote his first book:  In the Mind's Eye.  Tom's 2018 book digs further into practicality of this natural way of thinking from the past and into the future. 

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Book Review
Seeing What Others Cannot See – The Hidden Advantages of Visual Thinkers and Differently Wired Brains  
by Thomas G. West
Tom West’s 1997 In the Mind’s Eye connects strong visual spatial intelligence and verbal weaknesses from DaVinci to Patton in the past, with the realization that creative visual thinkers aided by computer technology will be at the forefront of today’s dramatically changing society.  In his 2018 publication Seeing What Others Cannot See he goes beyond countering the 'deficit-perspective' by offering stories from and about gifted thinkers that he gathers in eight chapters associating facets of picture thinkers.  ​

Each chapter offers a fresh perspective about picture-thinkers in word-thinking settings. 

• Ch 1 Seeing Whole – addresses how the academic system continues to rely on word and number symbols with education experts trained to believe what was taught decades ago using conventional tests measuring the wrong things.  As a result, the system continues to train and select strong test takers and traditional narrow specialists.  Among computer graphics persons word and number use equates to a ‘thin pipe to the brain’ while using picture thinking for information visualization is considered the ‘fat pipe to the brain’.  NASA James Lovelock’s intuitive leaps illustrate seeing from ‘top down’ what others cannot see coming from limitations of one scientific discipline or another. 
• Ch 2 Visual Perspectives shares that the more we understand deep brain resources for creativity and pattern recognition, the more we can realize and respect distant ancestors’ life and abilities prior to bookish education. 
• Ch 3 Seeing Along the Spectrum – though dyslexia was once thought as rare, today’s new attitude is beginning to recognize visual spatial  strengths of both autistic and dyslexic thinkers.  Here West shares that though  Tesla, John Elder Robinson of Raising Cubby, and Temple Grandin have many problems, they show us what is possible when you see and do things differently – by seeing what others do not see. 
• Ch 4 Power of Design touches on the frequency of dyslexia in design and computer graphics and addresses the argument that while some argue the move to images superficial, the move to visual literacy will be as important or more important than verbal literacy.  Forms of work change more rapidly than most are aware.  Considering that machines have taken over routine tasks such as ATM/bank clerk, deep-learning computer systems are soon to replicate other routine professional judgements like physicians and engineers. 
• Ch 5 Those who can see gives respect to the high level of sophistication of early non-literate peoples IE their use of stars and ocean currents.  He calls out the self-serving role of promotion by makers and users of books.  Here West, citing the writer Nigel Carter, illustrates the usefulness of trying to see the bigger picture by standing back to identify trends over time.  More ‘seeing’ is evidenced with physicist James Clerk Maxwell’s work in wet clay because “if you can visualize the shape, you can understand the system” and developer of thermodynamics study Willard Gibbs.  West relates scientists’ visual thinking strengths to the dyslexic writers’ strong observation powers going on in these larger than usual, slow moving, apparently overly connected brains that yield perspectives and insights often denied to non-dyslexics more likely to see what they’ve been taught to see, say, and move on. 
• Ch 6 Insiders/ Outsiders - West points again to the lack of balance between visual and verbal approaches.  New approaches manifest a trend in finding ways to return to visual thinking and learning in math by ‘doing’ instead of ‘watching’ math.  Mary Schweitzer’s persistence about her discovery connecting dinosaur to bird bones is one more example of someone who saw what others could not – or would not see.
• Ch 7 Seeing and Technology starts with Socrate’s misgivings of a new technology threatening to devalue human contact changing work, learning and communication – the book!  Now two millennia later we can ask our new technology to go beyond a book.  West shares how Benoit Mandelbrot of fractal dimensions fame experienced the trade-off between verbal, word/symbol difficulties that come with major visual proficiencies. By identifying patterns Mendelbrot  foretold 2007/2008 Wall Street financial mess.  As a consequence of fractal patterns in astonomy, Astronomer Nathan Cohen applied fractals discovering a single antenna able to do the multiple jobs required for cell phone use – without this intuition the need for multiple antennae replicating a porcupine would have made mobile phone less apt to have come to today’s necessity. 
• Ch 8 Visual Families and Nobel Prizes West observes Nobel Prize Committees’ shift to greater respect for ‘the practical’ when in prior times contributions of visual thinkers were considered primitive.  He relates Genius in the Genes conference speakers citing high level of science achievement linked to success in the arts; this tradeoff of early visual spatial proficiency comes with the cost of lack of proficiency with language systems.  West traces visual spatial talents of his clockmaker ancestors to artists and dyslexics in his family along with his own trouble with spelling and reading.  His abilities with higher level work and eventual success in can-do product oriented atmosphere show him working around his weaknesses and exploiting his talents and strengths.

Tom West concludes that we need to focus on trying to gain acceptance of this simple idea:  visual thinkers and those with differently wired brains can sometimes see what others cannot see. 

To recognize and cherish these different thinkers, education and testing conventions should be changed to recognize these differences, as well as signs of future accomplishments. 

His well-constructed aspects of various perspectives about visual thinkers Seeing Others Cannot See matches our work in the Davis Dyslexia Association International and Davis Autism Approach.   Our Davis perspective accomplishes West’s suggestions worldwide every day through our Davis DDAI® and DAA® Licensed Facilitator and Facilitator/Coaches. 

​ As Davis DDAI and DAA trained providers, we go a step beyond his recommendation: “There is so much more that needs to be done for visual thinkers…”.  Our clients do for themselves because of, not despite, their way of thinking.  Self-esteem rises as visual spatial learners realize they are ‘more than’ not ‘less than’ others.  Given this understanding and tools, they accept the responsibility and pride that comes with  Seeing What Others Cannot See - The Hidden Advantage of Visual Thinkers and Differently Wired Brains. 

Of children with reading difficulties, almost half have problems that are not apparent until 4th grade. From Kindergarten to Grade 3, focus is on ‘learning to read’. By 4th grade, now the focus is on ‘reading to learn’.  Some students have no difficulties with letter or word recognition or phonetic decoding. Yet, their reading difficulty is that they are unable to read fluently or comprehend what they read.

Linguistically, we know that a word has three parts: what it looks like (spelling), what it sounds like (pronunciation), and what it means (definition/picture sense).

A learner who is struggling with comprehension is probably lacking knowledge of what the word truly means.

Words without ‘meaning’, the third part of the word, hamper access to getting ‘the picture’ the author intended.  Often our picture thinking or our non-verbal intelligence demands more than the ability to recognize how to say a word. 

Sometimes it’s the small words we see everywhere (the, so, for, yet) or words with multiple meanings (run, of), or look like other words (on/no/one, of/if/off) that create confusion.  For picture thinkers sensing no picture or uncertainty of which picture associated with a word, is like reading a sentence with holes in it, like swiss cheese.  Another analogy: like viewing a movie where a few frames are missing every few seconds – would you stay for the whole movie?

I recall a 17 year old who could read, and did so with such great expression she often read aloud in class.  The problem she experienced was that she did not understand what she read.  The resulting stress and self-doubt hampered her ability to use the information she read in discussion and testing.

What to do: Take this learner through Davis Orientation Counseling® with the understanding that their great brain (so good at turning on its picture thinking) turns on automatically - and they can turn it off when it gets in the way of seeing the actual words written on the page. Introduce Davis Symbol Mastery®; this is an excellent method that helps the learner to integrate the three parts of essential words. Practice the Davis Sight Exercises - they increase reading fluency.

Learning Options matches short term programs that provide life-long results to take advantage of our natural way of thinking.  When a screening determines hands-on picture thinking strengths, acceptance into the program guarantees changes for the better.