Imagination while reading?

[Ea]

I have been wondering - for those who visualise "heavily" - how much is like watching a film in your head? I mean, I get glances/flashes of vaguely felt images (unless I stop and visualise intentionally, which I can do fairly easily), but it's far from having a movie in my head. I wondered how it feels like? If it can be explained at all.

Is it different depending on the type of book - for example genre? What kind of books do you read? I mean, I wonder if, say a literary book like Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain or Eco's The name of the rose would "feel" the same as a genre fantasy or a genre romance novel? I.e. does the type or style of book change the way you perceive it?

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by 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!

I'd think that people read for leisure because they enjoy it, whether or not they visualize. Hard to tell what qualifies as fun for others. I love to learn when I read, so I prefer nonfiction. Even with fiction, I prefer books that offer insight into how people think and behave, how other cultures work. I also admire writers who craft beautiful sentences.

I basically want more out of reading than pure entertainment. I used to read more for entertainment, but I've found that more unsatisfying as years have passed. I used to average a mystery a day in high school and college, for instance, but I've lost interest in them. I think I liked them then, because they provided escapist reading from school reading.

Anyway, those are my preferences. I figure everyone reads for his own enjoyment.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

I basically want more out of reading than pure entertainment. I used to read more for entertainment, but I've found that more unsatisfying as years have passed. I used to average a mystery a day in high school and college, for instance, but I've lost interest in them. I think I liked them then, because they provided escapist reading from school reading.

I'm begining to feel that change now. I've learned more about writing and start to notice the prose more, as well as I'm getting better at interpretation (literally couldn't do that at school at all). Hence I'm getting more critical. Though I wouldn't say for myself that what I used to read was for escapism - I feel I've learned to appreciate things about writing that I wasn't previously aware of.

[darthjoey]

Depending on the book, I'm can visualize it like a movie. Harry Potter, for example, always comes out like a movie in my mind. It's probably part of the reason I don't care for the Harry Potter movies that much.

[nguirado]

I've been teaching a while. Kids will magically become good readers when it's something they're interested in.

But, it would be foolish to think that everybody can read as well as everybody else. Everybody can get better (with motivation), but not everyone can be great.

[NetCat99]

Originally Posted by mrscoach

I have been working in schools for years, but am currently going to college to get my teaching degree in English. In the past two years I worked closely with students in an English/Language Arts classroom and have noticed something by casual observation and questioning.

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.

I've always had these images in my head when I read, and when younger was often the hero or heroine or a story. Ok, so sometimes I was the bad guy too, if it was an interesting character. I find it internalizes the story more and helps me keep everything straight.

So, do you imagine the scenes from the books you read? I know people who read a lot are most likely "good" readers, because if you aren't you probably aren't going to do a lot of it, but I was wondering about this little cross section of humanity (or non-humans, if any be on here).

When there is not any time constraint, it's often not matter of "can" or "cannot", rather it is more like "would" or "would not", I believe.

English is my second language and I started learning it past I was 18, so I'm a slow reader and conjuring imagery from words is not easy. I often force myself to do it, however, as that way I seem to remember better later:nothing remarkable, the more memory cues, the more likely we remember the event associated later.

But I never seem to read newspaper articles or manuals in the same fashion: even when I'm reading in my native language; I generally get something like event association table in my head. Nor do I visualize things when I'm listening to someone's story.

In my opinion, "the ability to form imagery" is only one of the many features of "a good(understanding well) and efficient reader(read fast)", but it is only one of the many. "The Imagery forming skill" might be playing an important role in vocabulary learning, mnemonics, and creative writing though.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by Ea

I have been wondering - for those who visualise "heavily" - how much is like watching a film in your head? I mean, I get glances/flashes of vaguely felt images (unless I stop and visualise intentionally, which I can do fairly easily), but it's far from having a movie in my head. I wondered how it feels like? If it can be explained at all.

Is it different depending on the type of book - for example genre? What kind of books do you read? I mean, I wonder if, say a literary book like Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain or Eco's The name of the rose would "feel" the same as a genre fantasy or a genre romance novel? I.e. does the type or style of book change the way you perceive it?

Depends on the book. Some stories actually got way too far in providing imagery and that excess of detail clogs my own imagination to varying degrees. On the other hand, if the story is cut to the bone, I can be left with not enought information to generate any images at all. But for stories that I find interesting, yes, I can almost see the movie playing in my head as I read. If the story isn't as compelling, I tend to just get 'snapshot' flashes of images.

For example, all three books in the "Mutineer's Moon" seris by David Weber tend to play out as movies, as does Eric Flint's "1632". On the other hand, something about the style of his "1634-1635" books tend to get in the way with too much information and I more often just flash on some images.

Derek

[TallMomof2]

This is an interesting discussion. I have a child who has learning disabilities and reading is difficult for him. He has a hard time visualizing at any time but it affects math more than reading. I've spent a lot of time with him teaching him to visualize and it's helped. On his own he never made the connection between symbols (letters and numbers) and what they actually represent. He could only learn to read by the whole word method, phonetics never worked. He finds it far easier to visualize if he has a picture to start with. Nowadays, his recreational reading is confined to magazines and graphic novels but that's fine with me.

Myself, I visualize *everything*. Math, reading, speech, music; it's all pictures and video in my mind.

[sspress]

I agree with you about different learning types. Your question is very interesting. I had not considered the difference before. I definitely visualize. Often I get off track and create scenarios in which I save the world. Have you read "Thinking in Pictures"? Temple Grandin talks about her life as an autistic person. She does not think in language, as I believe most of us do, but in pictures only. There is an updated version available as an e-book.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by RDaneel54

I normally "see" the scenes and "hear" the dialog when I'm reading. Obviously, some authors can write better than others so their descriptions allow me to be "in" the book more fully. I guess that is imagination, but driven by the book together with my mind, rather than my mind alone.

That's me. Often, after seeing a movie based on a book I've read, I'm often surprised by the choice of actors to play the characters I've imagined or by the backgrounds into which they have been placed. With characters in long-running comic strips, the difference is even more pronounced. When the "Peanuts" characters first appeared in animation, they didn't sound at all like I had imagined.

[P.A.Woodburn]

Yes, I imagine everything.

[mrscoach]

Originally Posted by sspress

I agree with you about different learning types. Your question is very interesting. I had not considered the difference before. I definitely visualize. Often I get off track and create scenarios in which I save the world. Have you read "Thinking in Pictures"? Temple Grandin talks about her life as an autistic person. She does not think in language, as I believe most of us do, but in pictures only. There is an updated version available as an e-book.

I had to sit through a day of autism training, hearing all about Temple Grandin, but don't remember anything about this book. I'll have to check it out (or buy it LOL). In, fact, I've been through several autism trainings because last class had three autistic students in it, that we knew of. One had other problems and we were never sure what was because of autism and what was 'other'. I'll have to talksd to Ann and see why she didn't mention it.

[Mitchi]

It honestly depends on how well written it is or how much I like the story. Usually, I do, but if a story can't allow me to transport my mind to whatever imaginary world it's trying to create, then I won't read it.

I'm odd though. Sometimes during a particularly compelling scene in a story, I'll even stop and sit there imagining what's going on without reading further (basically, imagining what I already read). In some cases it helps me visualize and enjoy the book better than just plain plowing through it, even to the point of pausing for a minute to mentally generate what the characters look like.

[TGS]

I've just handed my MA thesis in, which is mostly about a dead Polish philosopher called Roman Ingarden who, amongst other things, wrote about the ontology and epistemology of literary art. According to Ingarden a literary work can be thought of as consisting of four strata - the stratum of word sounds, the stratum of meaning units, the stratum of represented objectivities and the stratum of schematized aspects. These all come together in the process of concretization carried out by the reader. The interesting part is how our cognitive equipment puts together the story world from these bits - particularly the schematized aspects. Any novel will contain gaps - spots of indeterminacy - that the reader fills-in to make a representation of the portrayed world. Part of the skill of writing is the disposition of these gaps in such a way that they both prompt for particular fillings in but leave some imaginative work to the reader.

It's interesting to read responses on this thread about how people consciously experience reading, (of course, personal "internal" reflection might or might not be a good guide to what is actually going on), and it seems most of what we are aware of is happening at the level of constructing imaginative objects, without really being aware of the contribution of Ingarden's "lower" strata.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by TGS

I've just handed my MA thesis in, which is mostly about a dead Polish philosopher called Roman Ingarden who, amongst other things, wrote about the ontology and epistemology of literary art. According to Ingarden a literary work can be thought of as consisting of four strata - the stratum of word sounds, the stratum of meaning units, the stratum of represented objectivities and the stratum of schematized aspects. These all come together in the process of concretization carried out by the reader. The interesting part is how our cognitive equipment puts together the story world from these bits - particularly the schematized aspects. Any novel will contain gaps - spots of indeterminacy - that the reader fills-in to make a representation of the portrayed world. Part of the skill of writing is the disposition of these gaps in such a way that they both prompt for particular fillings in but leave some imaginative work to the reader.

It's interesting to read responses on this thread about how people consciously experience reading, (of course, personal "internal" reflection might or might not be a good guide to what is actually going on), and it seems most of what we are aware of is happening at the level of constructing imaginative objects, without really being aware of the contribution of Ingarden's "lower" strata.

Yeesh. I just had a flashback of a semester spent studying Noam Chomsky's linguistic theories.