Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!thom
From: thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (Thom Gillespie)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Words are worth many pictures
Message-ID: <29253@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 20 May 89 21:41:01 GMT
References: <2038@arctic.nprdc.arpa>
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Thom Gillespie)
Distribution: na
Organization: School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Lines: 57

In article <2038@arctic.nprdc.arpa> aiken@nprdc.arpa (Ed Aiken) writes:
>     Recently a couple of related threads on this bbs have become
>apparent to me. One is a general crtitque of our language -- both
>syntactic and semantic. The other thread questions whether text
>may be a dying communication media -- that there is a "brave new
>world" of graphic-pictorial communication ready to displace 
>linguistic media.

If you look at the history of text and graphics you have to realize that it has
a long history, much longer than the 'text' only mode we have been operating in
for the last 400 years. The real reason 'text' only has been 'text' only has
more to do with technological limitations than with what I might call 'the
cogntion of text'. In very few cases can a concept be adequately represented by
'text' only. Text and graphics is a more natural form, sort of multi modal,
multi media!. And while 'text' only can be very confusing, 'graphics' only will
be worse.

> ...

>     My concern is that the wholesale substitution of the graphic
>and pictorial for the linguistic could lessen our ability to adapt
>to this volitility ---- what psychologists call training transfer.
>It is currently fashionable (particularly in the expert system
>community) to see all knowledge as particular ---- to see transfer
>as really new learning.
>
>     It is at least a reasonable supposition that the heavy
>substitution of the graphic/pictorial for the linguistic in
>instruction may lead to even more particularism and reduced
>transfer.  If, as I suspect, propositional instruction
>produces a more generic mental representation, we may be
>sacrificing transferable learning for the admitted learning
>efficiency of pictorialism.

Considering the inevitable growing level of illiteracy this may be a moot
point.

>
>     Is there any evidence that either supports or refutes
>these suppositions?

A few years ago I came across a few articles which talked about 'picture based'
learning. I have never been able to find the articles or the term since. They
seemed to be interested in something close to the questions you've raised. I
remember the study as looking at twhat is retained from tv broadcasts of
weather reports depnding upon whether they used text, still pictures, animated
pictures or interactive animation.

>
>     It used to be a cliche that language was the supreme
>accomplishment in the evolution of our species --- Has the
>power of pictorialism made this assertion anachronistic?

I'd say that communication is our supreme accomplishment whether by text, film
or videotext in a Bart station

--Thom Gillespie