Contents
Test to discover how you perceive the world: are you visual, auditory or kinesthetic?
Psychology
Each person encodes reality in a different way and creates a different map or pattern of the world according to their own experiences or sensory perceptions.
Do you learn how to perform a task better if you do it yourself than if it is explained to you? Do you always draw pictures or diagrams when you need to understand something? Do you tend to stay more with faces than with people’s names? Do you get carried away by what you feel when making an important decision? You may not know but each person interprets reality in a different way depending on the way they perceive the world. Knowing if you are visual, auditory, or kinesthetic will help you understand how you classify the information you receive.
The discipline that studies this field is Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), a set of models, cognitive skills and techniques that allow us to know how we think and why we behave in a certain way. And it is that behind every behavior that we carry out, there is a thought that is executed in the subconscious plane.
María Alcázar, director of the Spanish Institute for Neurolinguistic Programming (IEPNL) explains the benefits of knowing NLP.
benefits
- You improve communication with others
- You have a clearer and more orderly thought
- You live more relaxed and aware
- You increase the security and confidence in yourself
- You solve internal conflicts
- You recode the painful memories
For her part, Monia Presta, a clinical psychologist, states that each person encodes reality in a different way and develops a different map or pattern of the world according to their own experiences or sensory perceptions: «We perceive the information that comes to us from the outside world to through the five senses: sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch. This information is represented in our brain, which encodes it to make sense of it, and it is different for each person.
According to Presta, we can use three very different channels to perceive reality:
— Visual: verbal expression of images. We think, remember and represent ideas through mental images as if it were a movie.
— Auditory: verbal expression of sounds. We think with sounds, voices, and noises.
— Kinestésico: verbal expression of emotions and sensations. We represent thoughts as emotions or physical sensations, taste and smell.
These three ways of perception are technically called ‘representational modalities‘. And if we learn to accurately recognize each of them and the mental map of people, we will develop an excellent communication capacity.
This will help us to understand the mental state of the other, not to criticize him for what he perceives and how he perceives it, and to understand that each one has a way of constructing reality according to their way of classifying information.
Thus, when faced with the same experience, for example, a party with friends, each person will remember the event in a different way. María Alcázar explains it this way: «The next day one will talk about the music and conversations he had (auditory), the other about how good or bad he felt and if it was cold or hot (kinesthetic) and a third (visual) of the aesthetics of the place and the wardrobe of the people ».
Do you want to know which representational system is the one you use the most? Find out by answering the questions in this test how you perceive the world around you!
Results
Visual
A visual person thinks in pictures and visualizes them in detail. He remembers better what he sees and not what he hears. You like descriptions and sometimes you stare off imagining a scene. In addition, he sees the words before describing them and the ones he uses unconsciously are: look, light, dark, bright, see, observe, witness, warn, have sight, glance, flash, imagine, blind, spy, foresee, perspective, recognize, scene, illustrate… Speak fast and with high volume.
In his non-verbal language we can detect a rapid blinking, rapid and shallow breathing, elevated shoulders, the head tilted forward and a scant corporal expression. He tends to touch his eyes and moves his hands a lot as if drawing things; He shows them to you with his hands.
Auditory
An auditory person thinks and remembers through sounds, voices, and noises. He learns and remembers what he hears, but he does not have a global vision. He likes dialogue, however, he avoids long descriptions. Think in sounds and do not remember details. The words he uses unconsciously are: listen, racket, whisper, noisy, mention, speak, shout, ask, argue, shout, rhythmic …
In his non-verbal language we can see that the shoulders are balanced and the head is back. His breathing is regular, calm and thoracic, it is pointed to the ear and the mouth and lips are touched very often. His movements are intermediate and his voice sounds medium volume and moderate tone.
Kinestésico
A kinesthetic person learns with what they do and touch, that is, they need to be involved in activities. He remembers what he did, but not the details: the images are few and in motion. The words he uses unconsciously are: feel, excite, hold, touch, hit, digest, move, touch, emotional, sensitive, happy, warm, tremble, insensitive, guts …
In his non-verbal language we can see that he keeps his head resting on his shoulders. His movements are slow, confident and calm, although he gestures a lot. It moves from the belly, the breathing being low, abdominal, calm and deep. He expresses his emotions with movements of the body, as he tends to touch himself and others. Speak slowly, with a low volume and a melodious tone.