Two Ways of Knowing (continued)

Many highly gifted children prefer the visual-spatial approach to learning, but they can also switch back and forth between the two modes easily, and tend to rely on their well-developed sequential abilities when they cannot immediately apprehend a concept by means of spatial perception. Correlations have also been noted between visual-spatial learning preference and introversion (Dixon, 1983; Lohman, 1994; Riding, 1983; Silverman, 1989b). "Children who showed a preference for imagistic processing were much more likely to be introverted, whereas those who showed a preference for verbal elaboration were more likely to extraverted" (Lohman, 1994, pp. 256-257). The emergent pattern is that gifted spatial learners are likely to favor the visual modality, to be intuitive, to prefer perceiving to judging, and to be more introverted than extraverted. They tend to demonstrate high degrees of overexcitability, particularly imaginational, emotional, sensual, and psychomotor. Gifted sequential learners are more likely to favor the auditory modality and are equally apt to be introverts or extraverts. Most of them will be intuitive, but some will prefer sensing, and a large number, particularly high school students, will be organized, planful Js rather than organizationally impaired Ps. They will probably score higher on intellectual, emotional and imaginational overexcitabilities than on sensual and psychomotor.

It must be kept in mind that while these correlations hold for the majority of children assessed, some sequential learners prefer vision to audition, some spatial learners prefer audition to vision, and some visual-spatial learners are predominantly extraverted. There is also great variation in patterns of overexcitability. The most difficult children to diagnose are those who have weaknesses in both auditory and visual modalities. They are often labeled "kinesthetic learners," since they need concrete, tactile experiences to help them compensate for weaknesses in the major modalities.

School can be an unpleasant experience for visual-spatial learners. Yet, their learning style may be uniquely suited for our technological future (West, 1991). With appropriate detection and classroom modifications, these students can be highly successful, particularly as they tackle more complex subject matter in high school and college. Visual-spatial learners show promise as future engineers, architects, pilots, mathematicians, scientists, computer programmers or technicians, entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, mechanics, human relations professionals, or spiritual leaders. They are our quintessential "late bloomers." Their chances of blooming are greater when they have teachers who recognize their promise, and adapt teaching strategies to fit their learning style.

It would be ideal if all teachers could modify their teaching styles to take into account all 24 of Dunn and Dunn's (1975) environmental, sociological, physical and psychological elements, as well as the different learning needs of all 16 types on the MBTI, and all the possible permutations and strengths of Dabrowski's five overexcitabilities. However, it might be simpler to start with the dichotomy between auditory-sequentials and visual-spatials and assume that the current program is working effectively for the majority of the first group. The 15 strategies listed above can be incorporated one at a time to observe their effectiveness.

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