What is Visualization?
Visualization is the process of creating and using visual elements to express, reinforce or communicate ideas, concepts, information or stories. It involves using graphics, symbols, diagrams, illustrations, infographics, storyboards, and other visual aids to make complex or abstract concepts more accessible and understandable.
Is the power of visualization scientifically substantiated? Yes!
Although visualization was considered a "hype" for many years, research has shown that there is a strong scientific basis for how and why visualization works. It is now a known fact that we stimulate the same brain regions when we visualize an action and when we actually perform that same action. Visualization stimulates the dual coding effect. Canadian professor Allan Paivio did research on memory. In the period 1971 – 2016, this resulted in more than 200 publications on the dual coding theory (DCT), loosely translated as 'double coding theory'.
Paivio discovered that verbal and non-verbal (visual) information is processed separately by working memory and is thus also stored twice in long-term memory.
These two systems are connected: for example, you can think of an image of a 'tree' and describe it or read about a tree and form an image of it. Images are more powerful: written or spoken text is stored once, but when words are visualized, this happens twice; verbally and visually!