The Mind's Eye Integrates Sensory Information and Thinking

1. Accurate perception is essential for learning
2. The mind's eye
3. The mind's eye "sees" what we daydream about      
4. Perception and context exercise
5. The mind's eye integrates information from all the senses to produce understanding of the external world
   
   

Accurate Perception

How can the dyslexic overcome his sensory confusion and accurately perceive what he sees? 

Accurate perception for the dyslexic is achieved through positioning his mind’s eye at a single point of view that unites his mind and his body and serves as a standard reference point. 

As the dyslexic's mind and body come together, he can align the input of his senses and stop his tendency to travel through the distraction and confusion caused by processing multiple derivations of sensory perceptions.

The Mind's Eye Inteprets Sensory Perceptions 

The mind’s eye is that portion of the brain or intellect that interprets and constructs perceptions and ideas out of the information received from all of our senses.

Our receptors of sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, balance, movement, rhythm, temperature differences, and intuitive knowing send information to the brain that must be interpreted and associated with known information before we can have any cognition of what we have sensed.  Then, we “see,” or more accurately, we “perceive” what our eyes physically “see” and what we otherwise sense.

The Mind’s Eye “Sees” What We Daydream About

The mind's eye “sees” what we imagine we’re seeing when we visualize something.  It fills in the gaps left by the information that our senses provide so that we can recognize something when we have only a sensory “hint” of it.  It functions like a projector of the imagination. 

 

The mind’s eye is the receptor of sight, as well as receptor of the input from all of our other senses. It gives congruence to the composite of information that the senses take in. Therefore, the “mind’s eye” could as easily be called “the mind’s ear” or the “mind’s nose.”  Through the mind's eye - an invisible construct of the mind - we experience what we imagine and also what we perceive of the physical input that comes from our external world.

Perception and Context Exercise

Perceptions of the Mind’s Eye are influenced by the context of an experience:

(Example created by: Steve Heissner, 1998):

Imagine yourself in a pitch-black room where you can see nothing.  Now you hear a “meow.”  Your mind’s eye will tell you that there is a cat present. It will also tell you that the cat is a domestic cat, and not a lion or tiger. Your mind’s eye will even provide you with an image or perception of the cat.  Although this image may not be what the cat actually looks like if you were able to see it, it can be a fairly accurate representation of the object that made the meow.

 

Now imagine yourself in a woods in the black of night.  You hear a "meow" and your mind's eye tells you there is a cat present.  Is this the same cat you imagined in the dark room? Is your reaction to this cat the same as it was in the dark room.  What is your mind's eye telling you about what this cat could be?

The Mind’s Eye Integrates Information

From the composite of all of our senses, the mind's eye gives us an understanding of the external world

 

The primarily multi-sensory thinker has a highly refined ability to use the input of his senses and to creatively distort this input until he understands what he sees.  His ability to move his mind’s eye to numerous viewing positions (position hop) gives him many perspectives on a 3-dimensional problem. However, when viewing 2-dimensional words or written characters, the dyslexic becomes confused by the wanderings of his mind’s eye.  None of the variations of perception give him any meaningful input. The MELT™ techniques teach the dyslexic to stabilize and integrate his mind’s eye so that he can recognize written characters or words, associate meanings with them, and MELT™ away his learning problems.
 
A dramatic example of the power and usefulness of control of the mind’s eye is in the perceptual and conceptual development of Helen Keller.  Blind, deaf and mute, Helen Keller was still able to learn and to identify the world and her environment based on the input of her available senses and her mind’s eye’s ability to interpret what these senses told her. She relied heavily, as do most dyslexics, on the integration of her functioning senses to compensate for what she didn’t understand.