I do a lot of… not “visualization,” exactly, as I’m not really a visual thinker, but sensory-conceptualization (“kinesthization” would be the right word, I suppose, were it a word) of systems and of states that don’t map to anything I know to exist in the world.
For example, I frequently model the urge to do things as something not unlike a current (aquatic, not electrical) running through my body. I frequently model social interactions similarly, as a flow running between and among people. I frequently model complicated thought-structures—arguments and software designs and so forth—as physical networks of strings and beads, like games of cat’s-cradle.
When I was doing a lot of cognitive testing after my stroke, and thus being pushed to remember long sequences of numbers and letters in various combinations, I found myself using a lot of kinesthetic markers to augment memory… e.g., I would “hold” items in my hands and order them with my fingers, or “hold” numbers in my right hand and letters in my left, or various things along those lines. It seemed to help, though I never compared results with and without those techniques so it could just as easily have been superstition.
It isn’t quite the same thing as what you’re describing, I think, but seems related.
I am not generally motivated to replace these imagined metaphorical models with more literally accurate ones, as I find them useful for various purposes. (The ones I don’t find useful, I generally discard.)
That said, I’m willing to believe that they are local-maxima that I could profitably replace with other models that map better to the underlying phenomena.
I do a lot of… not “visualization,” exactly, as I’m not really a visual thinker, but sensory-conceptualization (“kinesthization” would be the right word, I suppose, were it a word) of systems and of states that don’t map to anything I know to exist in the world.
For example, I frequently model the urge to do things as something not unlike a current (aquatic, not electrical) running through my body. I frequently model social interactions similarly, as a flow running between and among people. I frequently model complicated thought-structures—arguments and software designs and so forth—as physical networks of strings and beads, like games of cat’s-cradle.
When I was doing a lot of cognitive testing after my stroke, and thus being pushed to remember long sequences of numbers and letters in various combinations, I found myself using a lot of kinesthetic markers to augment memory… e.g., I would “hold” items in my hands and order them with my fingers, or “hold” numbers in my right hand and letters in my left, or various things along those lines. It seemed to help, though I never compared results with and without those techniques so it could just as easily have been superstition.
It isn’t quite the same thing as what you’re describing, I think, but seems related.
I am not generally motivated to replace these imagined metaphorical models with more literally accurate ones, as I find them useful for various purposes. (The ones I don’t find useful, I generally discard.)
That said, I’m willing to believe that they are local-maxima that I could profitably replace with other models that map better to the underlying phenomena.