NOW! Mental Imagery for Language, Comprehension, Memory and Reasoning™, children and adults will create mental movies while they read or listen — making comprehension much stronger and more meaningful.
Who can benefit from NOW! Mental Imagery?
This program is designed to assist those who struggle with:
- Reading comprehension — able to read well phonetically, but cannot understand information
- Organization — has difficulty relaying information in structured, understandable way. Often jumps around, has difficulty staying on topic
- Sequencing — often puts events/information out of order, often omitting information altogether
- Poor gestalt conceptualization — can understand parts, but cannot put them together to create a main idea
- Frequent re-reading — student has to read information two or three times to understand and may still not be able to remember information later
- Memory — often forgets material for tests and quizzes
- Main idea/Inferencing — Student has difficulty making predictions or being able to accurately summarize what they have read or heard
NOW! Mental Imagery helps students to make movies for information that they read or hear. By examining the foundational words and categories that are used to describe and explain information, students will process information more deeply and be able to retain information longer, understand it better and be able to apply it more effectively.
Children and adults who previously had struggled with comprehension and remembering of important information, will be able to make mental movies to represent what they have just read or heard. The information will be processed at a higher cognitive level, allowing it to be remembered longer and understood better.
Background
Many children who experience difficulty with language comprehension (oral or written) are not forming mental movies from the words they read and hear. They only grasp parts of oral and written language, such as a few facts or details, rather than the main idea of the information. This is referred to as weak concept imagery. Through the NOW! Mental Imagery program, children and adults with learning disabilities will learn how to better hold onto and understand written and spoken words.
This treatment successfully stimulates concept imagery (being able to make Students become able to create movies for words, sentences and paragraphs. These movies are very specific and contain details addressing color, shape, size, number and even movement. This ability allows them to more exactly comprehend and remember what they hear and read. As a result, their memory for critical thinking and their ability to express themselves in oral and written language is enhanced. The more brainpower is freed up to understand the information, the more brainpower can be used to apply and generalize the information. Creating movies from text is a natural process for people who comprehend without difficulty. However, people with dyslexia often do not make movies when they read – they are using most of their brainpower to sound out the words, leaving little left over to remember and understand.
How does it work?
The visual imagery begins at a basic concrete level. Students describe simple pictures in a systematic and organized way. They learn the language that is used to give clear, concise and accurate information.
As students become more fluent and organized, students are given more complex pictures to describe. Then they are asked to re-create images from their memory, describing them while holding onto the mental information in their heads. Once fluent at picture level, students work to describe words. Making movies from single words helps build vocabulary skills and improves retention. Then longer chunks of information are used – one word is stretched to a sentence, then multiple sentences.
Why is this important?
Research shows that memory is enhanced when visual and verbal systems work together. Moving from simpler tasks makes people successful at each stage. Making mental movies has a deeper level of memory.
Results
Students and adult learners exit the NOW! Mental Imagery program with a newly improved ability to accurately comprehend and retain verbal and written information. Gone are the days of several re-reads to hold onto words and concepts. Students and adult learners are better able to use and apply what they read on the first try.
Sign up for eTutoring
NOW! Programs are online – to get started, call (352) 275-5778 or send us an e-mail.