Imagination while reading?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

The difference, I think, is that we're reading to enjoy the story; you're reading to enjoy the text.

I would say you should read to enjoy the book. Just enjoying the story or just enjoying the text is not enough.

[mrscoach]

I don't think it matters if someone reads to enjoy the story or to enjoy the text, as long as they are enjoying what they are doing. Reading is never a waste of time.

Oh, I never said I felt bad about starting a fight, just that I didn't mean to. The fight is just a side benefit. mwuahahaha

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Angst

...I suspect this is much like the left brain, right brain dominance in some people. Some people may feel emotions brought about by reading words while other people visualize those same words.

Curious. I do visualize, often vividly, but I also experience emotions while reading, sometimes my own, sometimes empathizing with the characters in the book and frequently experience those emotions intensely.

[moon_cat]

I have no problem putting myself into books when I am reading fiction, and books with stories, but when I am reading something technical, my eyes usually glaze over (unless it is a realllllly interesting technical manual or something).

[Rich_D]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Oh thoot! The thilly eth key on my keyboard quit working becauth foam thorted it out.

I hate when that happenth!

[rblover]

I was brain damaged as a child, and recovered slowly. Reading was difficult for me, until it finally clicked. Phonics helped. Now I am an avid reader, reading daily. I do visualize, hear, etc, as I read. I have friends who say they don't, and they are poor readers. some of them are dyslexics, or have ADHD. The younger one can make the connection between reading, and imagining, the better it works. With my young nieces, and nephews, I often showed them movies, or TV shows, of things I planned to have them read later on. It seemed to help them with everything from The Cat In The Hat to the Harry Potter books. Eventually, they were able to clearly visualize while reading books they had not seen versions of on TV first.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by rblover

...I do visualize, hear, etc, as I read. I have friends who say they don't, and they are poor readers. some of them are dyslexics, or have ADHD...

Curious. I have ADHD and mild dyslexia and I became a prolific reader at an early age, reading far above my level.

[AlbertaCowboy]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Curious. I have ADHD and mild dyslexia and I became a prolific reader at an early age, reading far above my level.

I find that curious as well, as I was diagnosed with a textbook case of ADD when I was a child, yet always read at adult levels myself.

[SameOldStory]

I was very dyslexic. Very slowly, and over a very long period of time, I read faster and faster.

I do visualize, but have a slight auditory processing problem. When I read ALL characters in the book have the same "voice" (except Dracula Vhen he Voant's to Drink Your Blood ).

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by AlbertaCowboy

I find that curious as well, as I was diagnosed with a textbook case of ADD when I was a child, yet always read at adult levels myself.

I didn't get diagnosed until my early fifties. The moron who was supposed to be an expert on adult learning disabilities apparently never grasped the concept of age skew; as people age, they often learn to compensate for their disabilities. He ran all the standard tests, including the supposedly unbeatable MMPI (I've taken it four times; I beat it the first two times to hide things then the last two times I answered everything honestly), and the quack would have declared me as not having ADD based on those tests since he didn't allow for the fact I had had 50 years to learn how to compensate for it (same happened with the dyslexia so, according to him, I didn't have it). He never even asked about my past history, my performance and behavior in school, etc., which is vital for properly diagnosing ADD (I have a B.S. in Psychology and, under the direction of the shrink I was seeing at the time, had done quite a bit of research on the subject). It was his final, homebrew test, where I had to perform a simple repetitve task on a computer, one most of you would ace, that convinced him I did have ADD. I started out doing a great job performing the task but after a short while, performance started to fall off until I was doing as bad as a small child.

People with ADD (or Adult ADHD since adults don't bounce around as much as kids do) tend to be well above average in intelligence. I tested at only 121, which is well above average, but even the quack acknowledged it was probably higher due to the possibility the test scores may have been skewed by the ADD. Both my children were bright. My son may have had ADD, based on his behavior (not bad enough to have triggered a suspicion of ADD) and poor to fair schoolwork (he "had other priorities" until he got into high school football and had to keep his grades up to be eligible to play; his "priorities" shifted dramatically then), but was sharp enough to fly under the radar if he did. I don't remember what his IQ was but it was high. My daughter was a little brain with an even higher with an IQ of 132. She was a model student and never misbehaved but when it came to life, things that most people take in stride intimidated her so it's possible she has a mild form of ADD.

[jerrywojo]

I trained myself sometime ago in Wade Cutlers accelerated reading method and it was based on eye control and "visualizing" blocks of words. I think better readers use this method naturally with no training or practice.

So yes I visualize the story. The better written the story and my current caffeine intake determines the overall effect.

[avaloncourt]

Originally Posted by mrscoach

It seems that, often, poor readers do not 'see' what they are reading in their mind. They aren't making that connection in their brain and are too hung up on reading the words of a story. The good readers tend to picture the characters and action going on, just as if they were watching a movie.

Apparently I'm a poor reader yet I have two college degrees.

I can tell you exactly why I am a 'poor reader.' I have no ability to visualize... at all. If you ask me to think about an apple and describe it I have to recall variations of apples that I have memorized and relay hard information like shape, dimensions, color from a single example I've chosen. I can't see an apple at all. I can't draw anything from visual memory. I can only draw what I've memorized and my drawings are extremely two dimensional.

For most of my life I have never done any pleasure reading because, for me, I consume the words as if I was preparing for an elementary school reading test. Pleasure-reading for me was anything but pleasurable because I would memorize everything. I would tend to stick to things I wanted to learn and short magazine articles because long material would fatigue me terribly.

I have a friend that is a psychiatric nurse and we were discussing this years ago. He didn't believe that I have no ability to visualize. He ran me through a series of tests and, on several, he would be looking directly at me and ask me to visualize a (insert item here) and explain what that item looked like to me. He was watching for thought processes and eye responses. At the end he said, "Holy xxxx, you really can't visualize at all."

It took until about 6 years after that until I was able to 'visualize' anything and it has only happened a few times. I will get an extremely brief 'flash' of an image from something long ago. I can't focus on it or it will not happen. It's rather like catching something out of the corner of your eye. It's there and gone and you never got a good look at it. Best i can describe it is when, in movies, the director shows a flashback of some event that lasts only a fraction of a second. That's all I've ever had and it's only happened maybe five times in my life and all within the last four years.

On the upside, as I've grown older my brain can't do the memorization any more. When the Kindle came out I decided to try reading from it and found that I could actually get through books... many books... and not grind through memorizing them. I still can't visualize but at least I can walk through the story. This is why I'm a movie fanatic. People often say that books or old time radio shows are like the theater of the mind. I would always respond to them that in my theater I'm sitting in the dark and someone forgot to start the movie.

On the downside, I still can't visualize. People who have been in my life are just a filed-away statistical memory. My parents are dead and have been for years. If you were to ask me what my mother looked like I would have to go to the mental card-catalog that is my memory and pull out the card for some particular age that has features (hair color, eye color, height, weight, etc.) that I've memorized but to actually 'see' her I need a photograph. She doesn't really exist to me other than traits.

[shanghaichica]

I don't know what kind of reader i'd consider myself, but i've always visualised what i'm reading in my head for as long as I can remember.

I always find it interesting when they make a film out of a book that i've read and the way it is presented on screen is nothing like I imagined it!!

[Lady Fitzgerald]

While for some of us, being able to visualize may enhance the reading experience but there are factors as well. No matter if one visualizes or not, is the experience fun? Methinks that would be of serious significance significance. Another would be how well one retains what they have just read (in fact, don't comment here; I'll start a new thread for that)? I thoroughly enjoy reading (or I wouldn't be doing it...Duh!) but poorly retain what I have read. I can read a book, move on and with in a few months to a year or two, reread it almost as a new book!

[Ea]

Whether I remember a book or not depends on how much impression it left on me - but I think it's rare for me to forget to forget it almost completely