Reading Again
On the one hand, I think visual learners/thinkers have it relatively easy in this age of multimedia content becoming more standard way of consuming information. Almost any topic can be found in video format explained by multiple creators, so in theory, learning should be frictionless for this set of people.
Although I can see myself trailing towards a minority opinion here, I don't do well with acquiring information visually, it's more entertainment than education in some sense. I will be distracted studying the texture of the video and other variables, like the lighting, the background, the presenter's mannerisms, than actually listening and taking in the information being passed through.
On second thought, my logic tells me visual thinkers, i.e those who think primarily through visuals, may not actually thrive here either, given their level of mental activity could be proportional to the level of stimulation on the video content they're consuming.
I mean, can you think visually while watching a video that is already doing the visualising for you?
Granted, you shouldn't be creating while consuming, but the mind doesn't always follow that rule. Besides, it is just a logical feeling. Could be completely wrong.
Prelude to zoning out
The other hand is that video content has a strong element of passivity, almost like falling into a trance state, zapped into another world where your only job is to receive.
It can be an immersive experience in both a good and bad way.
A dense subject is approachable when someone walks you through it with visuals, tone, and pacing doing half the heavy lifting. You can follow a complex idea without the friction of decoding text. This is the good.
And then, that same immersion can swallow you whole, which is when content does so much of the work that your brain quietly clocks out, nodding along without actually processing.
Experience wise, itis finishing a forty-minute documentary feeling informed while at the same time struggling to reconstruct a single argument from it an hour later.
As an exercise, I often remind myself to be aware of my peripheral vision and stay back a little into the physical space when watching a video, so as not to get too absorbed into it and forget that I am still here, in a room, with a body and a mind of my own.
Make room for gaps
For comparison, reading isn't fundamentally different in terms of demanding your sustained attention.
However, it's not imposing on how to imagine.
Here's a passage I manufactured on the fly:
He paced around the edge of the cliff, trying to diffuse the anxiety swelling up inside of him for the upcoming performance, only three hours to go. 'Sunrise is a time for new beginnings', he tried telling himself when the first rays came out of the horizon and stretched long shadows across the rock beneath his feet.
Anyone who reads it will have to come up with his or her own cliff. Their own shade of morning light and version of what a man on the edge of something looks like. The reader is a co-author filling the gaps the writer deliberately left open.
Video would have already chosen the cliff for you. The height, colour, precise quality of that early light. Nothing left to negotiate.
Video, at its most immersive, tells you what to think about and then shows you how to think about it.
Reading hands you the what and leaves the how largely to you. For those wanting to have more room to think, like myself, the latter is the one to pursue.
Of course, neither is strictly better. However, it's at least worth knowing which one you're actually doing when you sit down to learn something.
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