Michelle struggles with comprehending both written and spoken language. While she can read words accurately, she has difficulty understanding the overall meaning. This is because she has weak concept imagery, making it challenging to form a whole mental picture from parts like facts or details. With weak concept imagery, individuals have problems with reading comprehension, critical thinking, following directions, and expressing ideas coherently. Visualization techniques can help strengthen concept imagery and thereby improve language comprehension.

1. Problem
Michelle reads words accurately, but she
can’t comprehend the content. She has
difficulty connecting to language she reads
or language she hears. Words seem to go
in one ear and out the other. People think
she is not trying, and she has been
labeled a “motivation” or “attention”
problem.

2. Cause
A primary cause of language
comprehension problems is difficulty
creating an imaged gestalt – a whole.
This is called weak concept imagery. This
weakness causes individuals to only get
“parts” such as a few facts or details rather
than the whole picture.

3. Individuals with weak concept
imagery have difficulty with…..
• reading comprehension
• critical thinking
• may not easily follow directions or connect
to conversations
• difficulty expressing ideas in an organized
manner

4. Symptoms
• Weak reading comprehension
• Weak oral language expression
• Weak oral language comprehension
• Weak written language skills

5. Comprehension
Auditory Visual
Phonological
Awareness
Orthographic
Awareness
Contextual Reading
Oral Vocabulary
Language

6. • Symbol imagery – a static type of imagery
for processing parts
• Concept imagery – a dynamic type of
imagery for processing wholes

7. Visualizing/Verbalizing
1. The climate
2. Picture to picture
3. Word imaging
4. Single sentence imaging
5. Sentence by sentence
6. Sentence by sentence imaging with Higher Order
Thinking
7. Multiple sentence imaging with Higher Order
Thinking
8. Whole Paragraph imaging with Higher Order
Thinking
9. Paragraph by paragraph imaging with Higher Order
Thinking
10. Page Imaging with Higher Order Thinking
Higher Order Thinking – imaging for main idea, conclusions, inferences and predictions

8. Let’s give it a try…
Picture to Picture

9. Picture to Picture
what size color number shape where
movement mood background perspective when sound
Structure words

10. Let’s give it a try…
Word Imaging

11. Let’s give it a try…
Sentence by Sentence Imaging
with Higher Order Thinking

12. The Ice Slide
• The black and white penguin waddled on
his short legs to the top of the ice hill. He
stared down at the cold water. Then he
flopped on his belly and slid down the
smooth ice. He splashed head-first in the
water and flapped his wings to swim fast.

13. The bravest man in the rodeo is the one
dressed up as a clown. When a cowboy
topples off a bucking bull, the rodeo clown
runs between the cowboy and the raging
bull. The clown dances and waves his
arms to draw the bull away from the
cowboy. The crowd cheers as he teases
and dodges the bull until the cowboy gets
away. The clown takes a bow as men ride
in on horseback and herd the bull out of
the arena.

14. Higher Order Thinking Questions
• Picture summary
• Word summary
• Using your images, what is the main idea of this
story?
• From what you pictured, why do you think the
clown might be braver than the cowboy
• From your images, why do you think the crowd
cheered for the clown?
• From your images, why do you think it might
have helped for there to be more than one horse
that came in to herd the bull away?