Visual Dependency

We are used to get visual information. Weather we watch a movie, read an article or talk to another person. In the movie most of the story is actual told by what you see: the emotions on the face, the surroundings or the actions of the protagonists. When you read an article you get more information than just the words and their meaning: the layout, the design and the adjustment also influence your way of reading it. And when you talk to another person you get information from his emotions on the face and the way he acts: his body language. When it comes to university, it seems that we are used even more to get the information presented by the visual. Power-point presentations, graphics, videos, diagrams and pictures are used in class every day. But what effect has that on our brain and the way we are able to affiliate information? Today in class I realized that I get into trouble, when I have to listen to a single audio source while not receiving any visual information. When I tried to concentrate on the speech which was played to us, I got distracted from the many visual attractions around me. Finally when I closed my eyes, I was able to listen to the speech intensely and to affiliate the information.

Can you stop following the game of chess of your fellow student?

                   
What does that tell us? At first our brain has to deal with a lot of distractions. We are able to ignore them, or to filter them, when the source we want to concentrate on presents the information visibly. You could say we are addicted to that way of presentation. But what you can see here too, is that the number of distractions has increased rapidly. It is not only my smartphone or laptop, but all the other screens, which I can take a look at. Finally you can ask why I am able to concentrate on the information of the power-point presentation while the same distractions in class are influencing me. But that is an easy answer: the screen of the projector is simply bigger.