The book, the image the imagination
Address to the School Library Association of Victoria
Melbourne, November 2002
David Whitehead © 2002
Sometimes our imagination makes it hard to be serious. That’s certainly true for the Walt
Disney Studios Imagineers whose mascot Figment – figment of the imagination, is
reproduced above. As the name ‘Imagineers’ suggests these unpredictable, seriously
funny people are paid to imagine and engineer their imaginings on to film. Like the title of
this conference that often begins with a book and the construction of images that enrich
our imagination.
Like the title of this conference, this address is in three parts. The first part might be subtitled ‘imagination: a personal experience’. The second part focuses on authors’ and their
imagination. The third part reports on my research into the role of visual imagery in the
comprehension of written text.
Imagination a personal experience
We all have it – to a greater or lesser degree – imagination. As a young child I exercised
my imagination by reading classic fantasy tales filled with cruelty and violence, mutilation
and murder, magic and fantasy, streaked by what is now seen as classism, sexism,
racism, and superstition. Today, I’m told to read books to my children that are didactic in
intent, that deal with prosaic everyday events and that will improve relations among
classes, sexes, and races. Such books, my colleagues argue, will help my children face
reality rather than flee into fantasy. I wonder?
In those formative years I also exercised my imagination in the back of a dark wardrobe
because my sister, who had a mental health problem, would shut me into this pitch-black
trap. I’d close my eyes tight, real tight, and until I saw flashes and patterns. These retinal
images, together with the textured coats and clothes that hung around me were the
ignition switch of my imagination. They took me through the back of the wardrobe and into
a world of velvet trees, taffeta waterfalls and cross-dressing giants who wore huge highheeled shoes. I would stay there until my mother came home from work, or Dad came
home from the pub.
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I have a clear and memorable image of the cuffs on Dad’s trousers when he let me out of
the wardrobe. They were filled with sawdust because he had been to a six-o’clock-swill at
the local pub. I used to imagine what the sawdust strewn, beer-sodden pub floor was like
and what they did there. And then I would retreat into my room were the forest grew all
around, and I would read C. S. Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles. I would go through the
wardrobe again and into another fantasy world. We all need imagination to escape from
the concrete realities of life, but in those formative years I had a very great need to do so.
I also received official recognition of my vivid imagination. I remember one school report
that stated ‘still dreaming’ and I remember the 18” wooden ruler with inlaid native timbers
that took the skin off my knuckles after my father had read the report. I was blessed, or
cursed with a vivid imagination, and as a child my fertile imagination was my best
protection against the onslaught. It seemed to me that apart from the authors I read
avidly, society, my teacher and my working class parents of protestant persuasion didn’t
value a dreamer. But the more I was shut in and shut out, the more important my
imagination became.
I ran away from home at 16 and meet up with an elderly Maori road maintenance worker
who lent on his clean shovel and drank cold sugared tea from a long neck brown beer
bottle. He was responsible for clearing the road of minor slips along an isolated stretch of
lakeshore. He lived through his indigenous knowledge and his imagination. I had found a
fellow dreamer, a storyteller, and he had found an apprentice.
He taught me about the night-winging keruru, the native wood pigeon who carried the
souls of the departed from the island cave in the middle of the lake across to the shore.
He taught me about the spirits that dwelt in every thing – anthropomorphism a lecturer
later told me, as if he really knew. He taught me to nurture the narrative and to value my
dreams.
At university I meet lecturers who had forgotten how to dream. One who had the
imaginative characteristics of a desiccated flat worm annoyed me so much I used to write
stories during his lectures that linked the patterns on his garish ties to what I imagined his
love life might be like. He got the best one for the end-of-year exam. I don’t believe a
person can be sane and completely unimaginative. I also met some child-like genius
lecturers who could imagine quarks and quasars. They were able to suspend their
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mechanical beliefs and enter the world of quantum physics. Their lectures were the stuff
of modern day metaphysical poets.
It is important to nurture the imagination and to foster a love of literature. It helps us
empathise with others, and from time to time it frees us from the fear of dark wardrobes. It
allows us to be other than we are and to question who we are. It allows us to be
somewhere we’re not, and to imagine change.
I didn’t know it at the time, but was told at teachers college, that retreating to my room to
read classic fantasy tales allowed me to symbolically re-enact deep psychological and
social dilemmas – well at least according to Bruno Bettlheim, but perhaps Bruno wasn’t
shut in wardrobes and whacked with 18” wooden rulers – inlaid of course.
I have continued my journey through the imagination, through Buddhism, and through my
doctoral research into the effects of visual imagery while reading.
That does not make me an expert of the imagination. Fortunately philosophers, cognitive
psychologists, scientists and of course writers of young adult and children’s books have
described their imagination and I would like to share some of that with you now.
What is imagination?
Observers as diverse as Plato and Samuel Taylor Coleridge have noted two contrasting
types of imagination. One is largely imitative and concerned with mentally reconstructing
past events or images. For example, I can still see, vividly and with ease, my father’s
sawdust filled cuffs and the 18” timber ruler.
In contrast to imitative images, creative imagination is associated with thought and
involves the restructuring, rather than merely the retention, of sensory impressions. It was
this faculty that Coleridge called ‘imagination’. One common form of creative imagination
that landed me in trouble was daydreaming. Creative imagination is the basis for human
achievement. It makes possible all our thinking about what is, what has been, and,
perhaps most important, what might be.
Recently I was reading Jacob Bronowski’s (1978) The Ascent of Man. He had this to say
about imagination: ‘Imagination or imaginative thinking is the reason why humankind has
progressed to such an extent over so many years’. I have it on good authority (my wife)
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that while Bronowski was writing The Ascent of Man, the women were already waiting at
the top!
Bronowski saw imagination as:
The opening of the system so that it shows new connections…All those who
imagine take parts of the universe which have not been connected hitherto and
enlarge the total connectivity of the universe by showing them to be
connected…just as my lecturer in quantum physics had suggested.
Many other exceptional people have had things to say about imagination. Albert Einstein
said "imagination is more valuable than knowledge” and it has been repeated a million
times since. What I also find interesting, and what I’m going to use later as a link to talking
about imagery and imagination among authors, is that when asked what parents should
read their children Einstein said: “fairy tales” and when pressed again he replied: “more
fairy tales”.
Indeed, Millar (1984) in Imagery and science has shown how the entire progress of 20th
century physics was a creative interplay between imagination, in the form of mental
imagery, and verbal / mathematical language. For example, Einstein, purposely used
imagery in his writing to reflect how the free variation of mental images in his own thinking
revealed anomalies, and how this led to his own solutions. Perhaps the most famous
imagined anomaly occurred when he noticed that, while riding a light wave through space
on his office chair, light waves would bend when he approached a planet. Thus was born
the idea that light was particulate and wave like, and that the particulate dimension
responded to the gravitational attraction of planets.
Einstein engaged in imaginative what-iffing; a type of thought experiment he called a
Gedanken. What-iffing can identify elements of a puzzle, rearrange them in our mind and
seek those connections that Bronowski spoke of. Perhaps there are similarities between
Einstein’s what-iffing and the what-iffing of any writer of children’s literature?
Another scientist, Mendeleev, who drafted the Periodic Table of Elements reported:
I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required.
Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper. Only in one place
did a correction later seem necessary.
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Some scientists report an ability to project themselves imaginatively into a novel situation.
For example, Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize-winning geneticist said that imaginative
personal projection was one of the talents he required as a researcher:
I literally had to be able to think, for example, ‘What would it be like if I were one
of the chemical pieces in a bacterial chromosome?’ – and to try and understand
what my environment was, try to know where I was, try to know when I was
supposed to function in a certain way, and so forth.
Again, Lederberg’s personal projections are grist to the mill for any author of children’s
literature as they come to understand their characters.
Authors and imagination
Not surprisingly, therefore, authors of children’s literature have a great deal to say about
imagination. Isobel Carmody in Matthews (1998) says:
I think imagination grows from having time to think and dream. If a parent
wants a child to be imaginative they must provide that time and honour
what results from it. Imagination must be seen to be valuable. (p. 25-26)
I look at the workload of secondary school students and wonder what we are doing to their
imagination, let alone their childhood.
There is abundant anecdotal evidence of imagery as a vehicle for composing. For
example, Blake and Coleridge reported vivid nearly hallucinogenic mental imagery that
inspired and found expression in their works. Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein took form
through a waking image as she describes:
My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, sifting the successive
images that arose in my mind with vividness far beyond the usual bounds of
reverie. I saw – with shuteyes, but acute mental vision- I saw the pale student
of the unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the
hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some
powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with uneasy vital half motion
(Shelley, 1963, pp. x-xi)
Other writers have recounted similar experiences. For example, my favourite ex-wardrobe
author C.S. Lewis (1996) wrote:
One thing I am sure of. All my seven Narnian books, and my three science
fiction books, began with seeing pictures in my head. At first they were not a
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story, just pictures. The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe all began with a
picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. (p. 42)
Enid Blyton was an exceptional imager. In Imagination and Thinking, Peter McKellar
(1957) quotes Blyton as follows:
When I shut my eyes for a few minutes, with my portable typewriter on my knee;
I make my mind a blank and wait-and then, as clearly as I would see real
children, my characters stand before me in my mind's eye...the story is enacted
almost as if I had a private cinema screen there. (p. 26).
And another quote from Blyton that I've always found intriguing is:
Sometimes a character makes a joke, a really funny one that makes me laugh as
I type it on to my paper and I think: 'Well, I couldn't have thought of that myself in
a hundred years!' And then I think: 'Well, who did think of it?
Again, C.S. Forester, author of the Captain Horatio Hornblower novels and The African
Queen, provided this account of the development of scenes in his books:
What is going on in my mind as I write them? I have no doubt that in my case it
is a matter of a series of visualisations. Not two dimensional, as if looking at a
television screen; three-dimensional perhaps, as if I was a thin, invisible ghost
walking about on a stage while a play is in actual performance. I can move
where I like, observe the actors from the back as well as from the front, from
prompt side as well as opposite prompt, noting their poses and their concealed
gestures and their speeches. One might call it four-dimensional, because I am
aware of their emotions and their motives as well. So I record what my
judgement tells me are the essentials of the scene I am witnessing.
(Forester, 1964, p. 77).
Imagination is the stuff that dreams are made from. And in a different way to film, books
help readers develop their imagination. As Brain Caswell states:
If a book creates a character, you have to imagine the character yourself. If a
film creates a character, he’s standing there right in front of you. (Matthews,
1998: 42).
When you read you have to do all the cinematography yourself.
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Maureen McCarthy says it better than I could ever:
I think having an active imagination matters a lot. It matters as a whole for
society – the way we’re going, what sort of people we are. If reading’s dying
I’m scared about our whole culture, because you just don’t get an intelligent,
deep flow of ideas from the visual media. You get a complexity and a depth
with the written word, which is just not there in messing around on the Internet
or watching TV or movies. (Matthews, 1998: 141).
Imagination and specifically imagery thinking is also central to the construction of
metaphor. Here’s a reasonably well-known one:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his life upon the stage
And then is heard no more
It is a tale
Told by and idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing (Macbeth: Act V, scene 5)
Here are two less well know student’s metaphors:
On school:
School is experiencing a day in the desert. You are out there with nothing to do
but try to find your way home.
From an English class:
Theme is getting to the middle of an artichoke. You get to the middle and you
see what made all the leaves. That is the root of it. (17 year old)
But not all comments about author’s imagination have been flattering. For example: Lord
Macaulay said about John Dryden in 1843:
His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich. It enabled him to run, though
not to soar.
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Imagination and mental visual imagery
In the third part of this address want to make a link between authors’ and readers’ use of
imagination and visual mental imagery thinking from a cognitive and neuroscience
perspective.
The effectiveness of mental imagery, (pictures in the head), was first noted, according to
tradition, by the Greek poet Simonides. He discovered the technique when the roof fell in
at a banquet he was attending. As the only person to survive the tragedy, Simonides was
presented with the problem of identifying the crushed bodies. He found he could identify
them by recalling who sat where round the banqueting table. He went on to generalise
this technique by suggesting one can remember items by forming images of them and
mentally placing them in special locations. Thus was born the method of loci.
Greek and Roman orators used this technique to remember major points in their
speeches. They would generate images and mentally locate the images round a room. A
modern variation is called ‘Galton’s walk’, from James Galton’s suggestion to take an
imaginary walk down a familiar path and locate items to be remembered along the walk.
Of course indigenous storytellers, according to tradition have been using mental imagery
to help them recount the stories of their tribes for many years before the Greek.
More recently, the unspeakable images of the Twin World Trade Towers of September 11,
2002 that were seared into our minds on that tragic day, bear testament to the role of
visual imagery in memory and cognition. Those images represent, literally, more than
words can say, and remind us that no matter how well the print media can report events,
reading is not exclusively verbal.
Tapping into visual imagery is one way of improving recall and comprehension of written
text.
Do readers image?
For more than 20 years research has shown that the use of visual imagery is a significant
factor in reading comprehension. The role of visual imagery in reading comprehension
has great intuitive appeal (most people see ‘pictures in their head as they read).
Although we have begun to document the role of mental imagery in reading
comprehension these understandings have, generally, failed to find their way into our
curriculum documents and pedagogy.
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There is considerable evidence documenting the role of visual imagery in reading
comprehension. For instance, Long et al. (1989) using a poem, a story and two factual
texts asked readers to pause and think-aloud. They found that 11 year olds reported
spontaneous imagery at more than 60% of think-aloud stops.
Likewise, Sadoski (1985) showed that 10 -13 year old students image spontaneously
during oral reading and that their key images were related to deeper levels of reading
comprehension such as recognition of plot and theme. Sadoski and Quast (1990) went on
to show that visual imagery is consistently related to readers affective response to text and
that visual imagery function is a predictor of long-term recall.
My research suggests perhaps 3-5% of the population cannot form visual images and are
surprised when they learn that other readers spontaneously image (Whitehead, 1990;
1998).
So readers generally image spontaneously, but what is the effect of asking them image?
Gambrell (1982) asked nine-year-olds to form visual images as they read. The students
were then asked to stop at points in the story and made predictions. They reported twice
as many facts, and made twice as many accurate predictions as a control group who were
not asked to image.
Again, Gambrell & Bales (1986) found that 10 - 11 year olds given training in the use of
mental visual imagery were able to monitor their comprehension twice as well as a control
group that did not receive imagery training.
This result is supported by the research of Oakhill et al (1991). They worked with nineyear-olds that had adequate decoding and vocabulary, but poor comprehension. The
students were trained to use visual imagery while reading. Post-test results revealed that
they outperformed controls on factual and inferential comprehension questions.
Together the results from these research projects suggest benefits may accrue from the
use of imagery based reading comprehension strategies.
How does the brain do this?
Visual imagery involves both hemispheres working in concert, but the left hemisphere has
a specific function in the generation and use of visual images while reading (Farah,
Gazzaniga, Holtzman, & Kosslyn, 1985). The brain behaves differently when reading
abstract and concrete material.
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What evokes an image?
The focus of my research (Whitehead, 1990) was on the characteristics and function of
visual imagery while reading. An analysis of the readers’ reports described below suggest
words and images are associated. An image can evoke an image, like an image of the
‘golden arches’ evoking and image of a hamburger. Likewise, a word can evoke a word,
like ‘fish’ and ‘chips’.
The results also suggest that words evoke images. For example, the words Burger King
can evoke visual and olfactory images, and an image of a hamburger may evoke the word
Macdonald's. As one reader reported after reading a story about a cave:
The word ‘mud’ (in the story) reminded me of a sludge pit on my cousin’s
farm…
Some text types evoke images more easily than others do - I have yet to form an image in
respect to anything obtained from my lawyer or the Inland Revenue Department. But, we
have known since the 1960s that highly descriptive concrete texts are easier to image than
abstract texts (see Paivio, 1971 for a summary). For example, the word ‘truck’ is easier to
image than ‘compassion’, although in an ironic twist, our understanding of compassion and
other abstract concepts may be dependent on the formation of a visual image.
We also know that particular characteristics of narrative text evoke imagery. These
include descriptive writing (writing replete with sensuous images and analogies) and a
story climax.
There are individual differences in readers’ ability to generate and use imagery. For
example, one reader reported that:
My images are…really life-like pictures like I was looking outside…really clear,
like, I like horses and I could picture my horse standing there in the doorway,
really clear, colour and everything, really life-like…(Whitehead, 1990)
Regrettably, about 3% - 5% of readers are unable to image at all (Whitehead, 1998).
Does imaging affect recall?
Imagery enables us to revisit / and literally re-view text and meaning. This may occur
spontaneously while we sleep or when we deliberately recall at text. For example one
reader reported that she could:
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…go back to exactly the same picture when I read the same word (that evoked
the image)…it stays in my head and you read and get the same picture.
(Whitehead, 1990)
This report suggests that the most deeply encoded / represented images and the most
readily recalled images are based on direct sensuous experience, a finding consistent with
claims by Kosslyn (1994) that images represented in memory have some of the qualities of
the original experience.
Does imaging affect comprehension?
Reports from readers in the 1990 study are consistent with Sadoski’s (1985) finding that
images are related to deeper levels of reading comprehension such as recognition of plot
and theme. For many readers’ visual images are, as one reader noted: ‘the actual sort of
things that tell the story’. For example, one reader reported that: “…when you see
pictures in your head you get the meaning of the book better” and a second reader
reported that: “…they (the images) are…sort of the actual sort of things that tell me the
story, more than me reading it…”
For some readers, visual imagery can be very pervasive, sometimes too pervasive. For
example, one reader reported that:
…you want to put down the book to see what [the picture] your mind is telling
you, what sort of story you are getting in your mind, and it puts you off
sometimes, and you stop reading and think about the things you were thinking
of instead of the book. (Whitehead, 1990)
That report suggests images may be so pervasive they can interfere with reading
comprehension. The implication for pedagogy is that the deliberate use of visual mental
imagery as a comprehension tool should not occur while reading – readers need to pause
and image.
Notice also how this report links imagery and thinking. Imaging is a powerful means of
thinking, one associated with key advances in science.
Does imaging affect critical thinking?
Imagery seems to help readers think critically. In the following report imagery assisted the
reader to think critically about vocabulary.
Text: The cat pushed its way out of the bag.
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Student: (after imaging) “In my picture (in the head) the cat struggled. I would
have used struggled.” (Whitehead, 1990)
This report was associated with spontaneous imagery evoked by the climax of a story and
resulted in an affective response to the text - a finding supported by research (Sadoski et
al, 1990).
The following report suggests imagery can also assist readers think critically about an
author’s description.
My picture [in my head] was better than the description in the book. The cat in
my head had a bent tongue. (Whitehead, 1990)
Note the detail in this student’s reported image - the cat had a bent tongue. This suggests
readers can zoom-in on a part of their image, and compare their image with an artist’s
illustration.
What kind of images do readers generate?
Based on reports obtained from 9 – 19 year old students, the types of imagery readers’
report can be grouped into three categories. Those most like the illustrations in picture
books are still (static) images. Those most like home-movies are moving (dynamic)
images, and images representing changes in physical and psychological state are melting
(transformational) images.
When readers use these three types of imagery to enhance reading comprehension they
engage in imagery thinking of one type of another. Thus, imagery thinking is the use of
images to construct meaning.
What is imagery thinking?
Imagery thinking involves the use of images, specifically to scanned across
representations, viewed them from different locations and zoom-in on, or zoomed-out from
these representations.
For example, pause and picture in your head a still image of a donkey. Now use imagery
thinking, that is zoom in and out from the image of a donkey, walk around the image or
rotate the donkey so that it is lying on its side.
Again, pause and picture in your head a moving image of a cork exploding out of a
champagne bottle. Now use imagery thinking, that is follow the path of the cork, slow the
speed of the cork, zoom in on what is happening at the top of the bottle or view the
explosion from a different position.
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Finally, pause and picture in your head a melting image of what happens inside a cocoon
as a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. Slow the transformation so you can observe
what changes.
Based on these exercises, it becomes apparent that static imagery thinking assists
readers to observe and describe objects. Moving images can be progressed to confirm
predictions, or trial outcomes. For example, moving images may help readers
comprehend the movement of a bird’s wing, continental drift, the spread of radioactivity
from a failed nuclear plant, a character running through a forest, the internal workings of a
motor. They may represent a gymnast in action or help you image the changing the layout
of a library. Melting images help readers understand psychological and physical changes.
.
The strategic use of still, moving and melting images is consistent with constructivist
definitions of reading comprehension. These definitions stress the role of readers in
processing and reflecting on what they know.
How might we explain these imagery reports?
The reports of visual imagery from readers support claims by Paivio (1971) and Sadoski, &
Paivio, (1994) that we represent knowledge in two systems - a verbal system and a nonverbal system. They provide support for the explanatory value of their dual-coding model
of cognition. This model suggests that there are separate but interconnected systems for
storing verbal and non-verbal language and that there are referential connections, or links,
between the two systems.
How might we use our understanding of imagery thinking in practice?
There are several imagery thinking tools (Whitehead, 2001) that teachers might use to
enhance reading and listening comprehension. These include:
R.I.S (read, image, and share)

Read to or with students.

Ask students to construct images representing objects, events and people described in
the text.

Ask students to share their images.
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R.I.M.S. (read, image, manipulate and share)

Read to or with students.

Ask students to construct images representing objects, events and people described
in the text.

Ask students to rotate, zoom or scan their images.

Ask students to share the meaning they constructed.
R.I.S.E.
(read, image, share and evaluate)

Read to or with students.

Ask students to construct images representing objects, events, settings and people
described in the text.

Ask students to share their images.

Ask students either to evaluate their images against (1) the author's description as the
text is re-read or (2) the illustrations as they are revealed.
R. I. M. D.S. (read, image, manipulate, draw and share)

Read to or with students.

Ask students to construct a still image.

Ask students to move or melt the objects they have imaged.

Ask students to draw the still image, then, a series of frames that show how they
imagined the object moving or melting.
R. I. W. S. (read, image, write and share )

Read to or with students.

Ask students to construct images.

Ask students to write a description / explanation based on their images.

Ask students to share (1) their images and (2) their written texts.
There is also some evidence that readers visual imagery ability declines over time (see
Figure 1). For example, based on a sample of 420 students (approximately42 at each age
group from 10 – 19 years) and results obtained from the administration of the Visual
Imagery Ability Questionnaire (Whitehead, 1998) it appears there may be a gradual
decline in general imagery ability from 10 – 19 years of age. The ability to generate and
use moving images seems particularly sensitive to this decline.
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Figure 1
Scores from the Visual Imagery Ability Questionnaire
Mean Test Score
Mean Sub Test Scores
Age
Mean
Age
Still images
Moving images
10
314
10
87
91
12
293
12
79
87
14
308
14
82
93
16
287
16
76
89
18
264
18
70
79
(Source: Whitehead, 1998)
Conclusion
We all have it, to one degree or another. Imaginer, scientists, young boys trapped in
cupboards and of course authors. Our imagination can be enhanced or crippled, in part
perhaps by an education system that values the verbal and denigrates the dreamer.
In Ariel, Zed & the secret of life Ariel’s mother, Concetta, has a firm belief in the
imagination. The ‘mind muscle’, she called it, and said it needed exercise every day.
(Anna Fienberg: Ariel, Zed & the secret of life p. 15).
My research suggests that without exercise our ability to image may decline. Readers’
imagination can be engaged and enhanced as a powerful tool for learning. I believe we
should do this not only because reading books and engaging our visual imagination leads
to attractive destinations, but also because the journey itself is immensely satisfying.
References
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