Why Visual Explanations of Ideas Are Better Than Verbal Representations

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The group that created visual explanations outperformed the group that created verbal explanations
Visual explanations included more structural, functional, and causal information
Making a diagram allows for inference and provides a check for completeness and coherence
Visual explanations encourage abstraction and identifying essential information

My guest today is acclaimed psychologist and longtime Stanford University professor Barbara Tversky who calls on her nearly 50 years in the field of cognitive psychology for an in-depth discussion about how our minds work.

We discuss the Nine Laws of Cognition, why action shapes thought, how the language we use changes what we think, tactics to communicate better on Zoom, why she dove into the work of Leonardo da Vinci, when to use charts and when to avoid them, the importance of perspective taking, learned knowledge vs. earned knowledge, and so much more.

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