The brain is a powerful organ that handles a vast array of cognitive functions. From having its own memory storage system, to processing information from sensory organs, to handling visual, spatial, and verbal imagery – the brain is the primary director of cognition.
This article focuses on visual, spatial, and verbal imagery: what each term means, and the key differences among all three. In addition, this article explains why ranking these imagery forms from most important to least important is a bit too subjective.
To begin, it will help to get definitions in order. Visual imagery, as the term suggests, often involves the sensory input, via the eyes, that is processed within the visual cortex, which resides within the occipital lobe. Put more simply, visual imagery reveals an object’s physical characteristics: color, size, other attributes (Revlin, 2013).
Because the brain heavily uses pattern recognition when receiving visual imagery, it employs bottom-up and top-down processing to render details about visual images. This rendering usually occurs by first forming rudimentary details (bottom-up processing), and then elaborating on those details (top-down processing).
At the same time, visual imagery can also be triggered based on stored memories and perceptual experiences. In other words, the mind is quite capable of producing images without receiving input through the eyes or other sensory organs. Dreaming and performing mathematical functions are two examples (Revlin, 2013).
Spatial imagery, located in the parietal lobe, involves how the components of an object relate to each other. Moreover, because visual and spatial imagery are processed differently within the brain, a deficiency in one does not necessarily mean a deficiency in the other (Sima et al, 2013). A study conducted in 1988 confirmed this by measuring comparing visual and spatial processing among subjects with brain lesions: Some subjects with weaker spatial imagery still had well-functioning visual imagery, while other subjects showed the opposite. In more recent studies, an even clearer distinction has been made between visual and spatial imagery: spatial imagery is more significantly involved with problem solving and deciphering sentence structure (Revlin, 2013).
Verbal imagery is the final term in this discussion, though it is certainly not the least significant. Verbal imagery rounds out visual and spatial by incorporating parts, or all, of both mechanisms. And interestingly, verbal imagery does not fully determine which mechanism may be more engaged in processing information. For instance, some individuals may heavily use verbal imagery to understand spatial relationships, while others may struggle to connect the two mechanisms (Kraemer et al, 2009).
This moves into the argument that determining which form of imagery is most important is too subjective. Although numerous studies have shown that individuals may lean towards one specific form of imagery versus others (Harvard, 2020), the variables involved could make for an entire dissertation. For instance, if a person is blind, spatial and verbal imagery may often be stronger than visual imagery, yet it is still possible to for a blind person to build visual imagery using other sensory organs, stored memories, and perceptual experiences (Kraemer et al, 2009).
Or what if an individual has brain lesions? Or hemineglect? Or prosopagnosia? Or what if a room is filled with people who have different cognitive abilities, or different degrees of memory function, or different approaches to problem solving that all are comparably valid?
Therefore, instead of choosing a most important form of imagery, multi-varied studies yield a more holistic approach to understanding which imagery forms apply best to which circumstances.
References
Revlin, R. (2013). Cognition theory and practice (1st ed.). New York, NY: Worth Publishers
Kraemer, D., Rosenberg, L., Thompson, S. (2009). The Neural Correlates of Visual and Verbal Cognitive Styles. https://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/12/3792
Harvard Medical School, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. (2020). Object-Spatial-Verbal Cognitive Style Model. http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/mkozhevnlab/?tag=object-spatial-verbal
Sima, J., Shulttheis, H., Barkowsky, T. (2013). Differences between Spatial and Visual Mental Representations. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3669897/