Re: Reading versus books on tape

["Steven R. Livingstone" <srl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Toth,

A few years ago I came across some interesting work that investigated processes similar to this.  The research was investigating multi-tasking in the brain.  Initially the study examined how people count numbers to themselves.  Surveying a group of individuals, they found some people visualise the number in their heads, while others 'sound' the number.  Next the respondents were given an audio and a visual task to complete while simultaneously counting numbers.  They found that the respondents who visualised the numbers were able to handle the audio task simultaneously, but not the visual.  Conversely, the respondents who 'sounded' the number could handle the visual task, but not the audio.  In relation to learning, it may be that some rely more heavily on visual memory, while others use audio.  Unfortunately I cannot remember any other details of the study (author, year etc). 

As an interesting aside for the auditory group, as a pianist I find that my ability to perform is seriously compromised when my spatial orientation relative to the keyboard changes (e.g., standing up).  By this I mean, my recall of where to move my hands is lost.  While I still 'sound' the music in my head, the physical act is affected.

Cheers,
Steven.


Toth Laszlo wrote:

On Thu, 6 Jul 2006, tony stockman wrote:

  

anecdotally I believe for myself at any rate, as a blind person and
having used braille since primary school, braille reading is more
effective for learning than listening to tape.
    

I think that quite many people (including me) performs a kind of visual
learning. For example, I can recall even after years how a certain piece
of information was positioned on the page of the book. Because of this, I
can hardly imagine how I could learn anything by listening to a tape (I
have never tried it, though). Sorry, this is only "anecdotal", but I hope
somebody here can name some real study on this.

               Laszlo Toth
        Hungarian Academy of Sciences         *
  Research Group on Artificial Intelligence   *   "Failure only begins
     e-mail: tothl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx            *    when you stop trying"
     http://www.inf.u-szeged.hu/~tothl        *
  

-- 

========((((((((({{{{{{{+}}}}}}}))))))))========
Steven R. Livingstone, BSc (Phy), BInfTech (hons), PhD incarcer
"Ignorance isn't bliss, it's just easier"
http://itee.uq.edu.au/~srl