Are you a visual/spatial or auditory sequential learner?
- Do you think in pictures rather than words?
- Find it difficult to totally follow spoken information: facts, directions, instructions explanations?
- Remember what you see better than what you hear?
- Know things without being able to explain why?
- Need to see the big picture first and can then grasp concepts immediately and put them into a larger perspective, often seeing connections and patterns others haven’t noticed…
- Have a vivid imagination?
- Remember your dreams?
- Remember information best through doodling, drawing mind maps, flow charts and coloured highlighters.
- Have been told you solve problems in unusual or creative ways
- Would rather look at a map than ask directions?
- Remember how to get to places you visited only once?
- Visualise an object from different perspectives and understand blueprints?
- Liked lego as a child, now into Rubric cubes if an adult?
- Prefer to and good at using technology – computers, graphic organisers, ipads etc.
- Can always find the way back to where the car is parked?
- Musically, artistically or mechanically inclined?
- Have trouble expressing ideas precisely – maybe “speak” with your hands?
- Often succeed at more complex tasks yet continue to have trouble with simple tasks, such as times-tables even while completing a complex algorithm correctly: spelling and writing in correct grammar.
- Can remember exactly where you were and the whole scene in colour and detail, but not when it was?
- Better at space (where things are) than time (when things are)?
The visuo/spatial learner will agree with most of these questions while their opposite (auditory/sequential) learner will be mostly disagreeing. The sequential learner prefers to learn step by step, then review and connect ideas, and thinks convergently (builds on established facts in a hierarchical fashion). They would prefer to listen to or read instructions before assembling the model while the visuo/spatial learner can “see how it goes” often without a glance at the d-i-y instructions. The auditory/sequential learner can be relied on to be on time, have all the right equipment, completed homework and be able to follow instructions perfectly… So of course will be liked by teachers who see then as good students. The visuo/spatial learner doesn’t come into their own until University when they can follow the subject of their choice and in their own way – but then their creative ability is likely to lead to innovations and inventions than the sequential learner couldn’t imagine.