A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

The saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words” is often used to describe how powerful an image is in terms of its capturing power. Images are used by human in a lot of different ways. The most common usage is to capture information. Aside from capturing information, it is also used to compute, compare and recall. With its vast abilities, imagery, especially visual mental imagery, is vital to human intelligence. It is a good complement with other mind based system to enhance human intelligence. It provides a different approach in representing and computing. However, images are limited to only storing limited information and are not efficient in representing abstract ideas.

Human intelligence is the ability to learn and solve new problems. As human, we all learn and solve problems differently but the method in learning and solving problem can often be generalized and classified. Our mind can be classified as a combination of logic, rules, concepts, analogies, images and connections based system. Each of these systems has its own advantages and is used in different scenarios. For example, rules are used to induce logic flow. Concepts are used to generalize knowledge so it can be compared in a new scenario. These systems are used to represent our knowledge in different symbols and representation and allow us to easily apply it in new scenarios. Therefore, without the ability to generalize patterns and recall knowledge from our memory, we will never be able to link our knowledge to specific situations and hence we will unable to build on human intelligence.

Image provides another way of representing information. Instead of representation through words, image provides a mental representation of an experience. These experiences m...

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...objects and its characteristics. It also allows spatial relationship between images to be shown through depictive representations and propositional representations. Lastly, we can compute images through our ability to inspect, find, zoom, rotate and transform images to our liking. However, visual mental imagery are limited by we can only capture limited information in images due to our fast fade rate. In addition, images cannot be used to represent abstract ideas. Images can only excel in visual problems such as inspection and navigation. Therefore, images, especially visual mental imagery, can only be a complement to other mind system in enhancing our human intelligence.

Works Cited

Paul Thagard, D. (2005) Mind. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kosslyn, S.M., Thompson, W.L., & Ganis, G. (2006). The Case for Mental Imagery. Oxford: Oxford University Press.