When keeping the Learners Attention, the visual memory is of uttermost importance as 60% of the brain is involved in vision. But how to make your visuals stand out? Your Iconic Brain Receives input from +6.000.000 receptors. As an instructional designer you can speedup and strengthen the uptake of visual information by using:

1. Pre Attentive Attributes
2. Gestalt
3. Sensory Symbols
4. Cognitive Dissonance

Pre Attentive Attributes are simple visual attributes that can be processed extremely fast in parallel and high volume. This without any conscious effort by the iconic memory. Just try to count the how many times the number “5” appears in the below text.

987349790275647902894728624092406037070570279072

803208029007302501270237008374082078720272007083

247802602703793775709707377970667462097094702780

927979709723097230979592750927279798734972608027

Now count the 5’s in the same set of numbers in the below text that uses pre attentive attributes.

987349790275647902894728624092406037070570279072

803208029007302501270237008374082078720272007083

247802602703793775709707377970667462097094702780

927979709723097230979592750927279798734972608027

The Brain Loves Difference! And it is making us read/see faster. All visualizations should properly use pre attentive attributes to convey information that is the key to the visual communication.

Gestalt means Pattern in German: The whole is other than the sum of the parts. It offers a principle of grouping to facilitate visual perception. Our visual working memory has limited storage, by using gestalt, we can reduce the amount of items that need to be stored. This way facilitating the maintenance and retrieval of information in the visual working memory.

Sensory Symbols are symbols that can be understood without training, while Arbitrary symbols must be learned.

Cognitive Dissonance takes place in the short term memory during the conscious part of perception, which is called “attentive” processing. Here we can put the sensory top down approach to a positive use. By conflicting the mind, when it is tapping into previous experiences, that contradict with the visual representation. This way creating a mental discomfort. A person who experiences this internal inconsistency tends to become psychologically uncomfortable and is motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance.

In an eLearning use Pre Attentive Attributes to capture the attention, Gestalt to increase the amount of information that can be stored in to working memory, Sensory Symbols to speedup understanding and Cognitive Dissonance to make the learner think.