HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT, APRIL 2013When I was young, I thought everybody processed information the same way. I assumed that everybody else thought in photorealistic pictures, as I do. For example, if I think about a soccer ball, I first see the soccer ball I played with in elementary school, then I envision the volleyball in the movie Castaway where the guy in the FedEx plane crashes on a remote island, and finally a FedEx package on my doorstep flashes into my imagination. My mind goes from soccer balls to FedEx packages through a process of highly associative thinking.
Rather than holding me back, however, this photorealistic thought process has been a great asset in my work as a scientist and designer of chutes and pens for handling cattle. It enables me to build and conceptually test the cattle equipment that I invent in my mind. When I read the methods section of a scientific paper, I visualize how the researchers performed their study. Conflicting results between different studies can often be explained
by differences in the methods.
Too often, however, when my way of thinking appears in young science students, it is seen as something that needs to be corrected. I am concerned that our educational system is blocking photorealistic visual thinkers like me from careers in science. Instead, we should encourage diversity ...
