What happens when we read?
Humanity's first attempts at written communication - cave paintings and iconography - conveyed messages by making use of our innate ability to recognize "real" objects. These natural forms of communication spread throughout civilization.
But then, around 3,000 years ago, we began to warp these icons and pictures into symbols for more concise communication. Thus the alphabet and the written word were born.
After our inbuilt neural circuits do some gymnastics to identify squiggles and shapes as letters and words, our brains start secretly "visualizing" the words to build a picture – all without us even knowing. We take reading for granted, but it involves some serious brain power.
When you read that, your brain identified key concepts and their relationships and translated these into a message-revealing image. This process even works with abstract concepts.Ever thought it was weird when a film adaptation wasn't how you imagined a novel - even though there were no illustrations? Well, now you know why. That’s also why children's books incorporate pictures alongside text. Images work as ‘training wheels’ for a child's brain as it learns to visualize.
This miraculous process has some unexpected effects. For example, the use of imagery makes information retention soar with studies showing that written copy supported by contextual images is recalled 6.5 times better than words alone.
Visuals also persuade. A study by 3M showed that 50% more people will be persuaded by an argument if it is presented in a visually-rich format versus a text-only one. No change to the argument itself, just the use of visuals.
Information is remembered roughly six times better if presented visually
Information presented in a visual way is ingested at lightning speed.
That's pretty amazing when you consider all the other important and complex things you do in your day-to-day life.
Scientists believe that our need for visual processing power has caused roughly 60% of our genes related to the sense of smell to be irreparably damaged.
For anyone creating content, this information should stop us dead in our tracks. If visual information has such a profound impact on how we engage with and retain information, shouldn't we be doing all we can to take advantage of this in our work?
Clever advertisers figured out the power of images long ago and used it to get us to buy their products instead of their competitors’ offerings. But the use of imagery in content is typically less sophisticated - we might include a single image at the top of a blog post, but that’s it.
