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 Routledge Revivals

Learning and Visual Communication

Originally published in 1981, Learning and Visual Communication is

about how to use visual communication in education. It offers visual
forms of communication. In order to do this it draws on recent research
- at the time of publication - in psychology, philosophy, semiotics,
cultural analysis, education and media studies. Visual thinking, the key
concept of the book, is defined in psychological and philosophical
terms. It is placed in its cultural context and it is argued that it has not
received the attention that it deserves in our educational system, which
is dominated by literacy and numeracy. This is despite the increasing
use of visual communication as an aid to learning and as a source of
basic data in a whole range of disciplines such as physical science,
geography, history and anthropology amongst others.
Learning and Visual
Communication

by David Sless
First published in 1981
by Croom Helm Ltd.,
This edition first published in 2018 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1981 David Sless
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publishers.

Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes
correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.
A Library of Congress record exists under LCCN: 81006417

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-07651-1 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-429-02190-9 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-367-07657-3 (pbk)
Learning and Visual
Communication
DAVID SLESS

A HALSTED PRESS BOOK

CROOM HELM LONDON

JOHN WILEY & SONS
New York — Toronto
© 1 9 8 1 David Sless
Croom Helm Ltd, 2-10 St John’s Road, London S W 11

Published in the U .S.A . and Canada

by Halsted Press, a Division of
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., N ew York
LC Number:

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Sless, David
Learning and visual communication. - (New patterns
of learning series)
1. Visual Perception
2. Perceptual learning
I. Title II. Series
152.1 ’4 BF241
ISBN 0-7099-2319-8

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Sless, David.
Learning and visual communication.

(New patterns of learning)

“A Halsted Press book.”
Bibliography: p. 189
Includes index.
1. Learning, Psychology of. 2. Visual perception.
3. Interpersonal communication. I. Title. II. Series.
B F318.S54 1981 370.15’5 81-6417
ISBN 0-470-27231-7 (Halsted Press) AACR2
CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

1. The Thinking Eye 15

Introduction 15; Theory and Knowledge about Vision 15; The
Optic Array 18; Schemata and Objectification 19; Visual Literacy
21

2. Communication 23
Introduction 23; The Two Faces o f Communication 24; The
Discovery o f Pulsars 25; The Communication Schema 26;
Inference and Visual Communication 27; Communication and
Information 28; The Case o f the Wink/Twitch 28; Meaning 30;
4What is the Meaning o f this Message?* 31; A Note on Effects 32;
Behaviourism and Rules 33; Postscript to the Pulsar 34; The
Author/Message Relation 35; The Inferred Audience 35; Know­
ledge o f the Audience 38

3. Visual Communication -+ the Author/Message Relation 42

Introduction 42; Effective Communication — the Primary Focus
43; The Institutional Framework 44; Professionalism and the
Inferred Audience 45; Traditions o f Practice 48; Visual Com­
munication Practice: The Legacy o f the Bauhaus 49; Gestalt and
Basic Design 52; Basic Design and the Metaphor o f Physics 5 7;
Education and Communication Effectiveness 62

4. Visual Communication and the Student 63

Introduction 63; What is ‘Semiotics’? 64; The Atypical Nature o f
Language 65; Is the Perception o f Pictures Learnt? 67; The
Picture in Our Culture 73; The Empirical Study o f the Audience/
Message Relation 77

5. Learning and the Forces of Change 79

Introduction 79; Learning— the Systems Aproach 80; Direct and
'Mediated Learning 86; Media Cognition and Learning 88;
Learning, Schema and Objectification 91
6. The Photograph 93
Introduction 93; The Myth and Metaphor o f Transparency 94;
The Photographer’s Choice 95; The Photograph’s Context 100;
Photographs in Texts 105; Attentional Relation 107

7. The Drawing 112

Introduction 112; Explication and Drawing 113; Descriptive
Illustrations 114; Explanation and Description 123; Expressive
Illustrations 127; Constructional Illustrations 132; Functional
Illustration 139

8. Graphs and Diagrams 142

Introduction 142; The Range o f Material 143; The Visual Basis
144; Some Areas o f Doubt and Research 148; Diagrams and
Thinking 157

9. Typography — the Hidden Order 164

Introduction 164; Typography as Stimulus 165; Typography as
Social Practice 167; Reading as Social Practice 169

IQ. The Future of Visual Education 172

Introduction 172; Luminous Sundials? 172; Missing Media
174; The Work o f Visual Communication 176; Research Prior­
ities 178; Visual Communication in General Education 179
Glossary 181
Annotated Bibliography 189

References 192

Index 200
To Toni, Justine, Hannah, Eva and Georgia
PREFACE

This book is an attempt to provide a way of thinking about visual

communication, and it is written specifically for those with an interest,
but no specialist knowledge, in the subject. The emphasis is on the
educational uses of visual communication though the ideas have a
much wider application to our understanding of communication in
general. I have followed certain principles in writing this book, which
are intended to help the reader. Wherever possible I have avoided
specialist terminology; where this has been unavoidable I have given
detailed definitions which are summarised in the glossary. This is not
a comprehensive book but a development of main ideas; evidence is
only introduced by way of example and the reader in search of greater
detail will find many useful sources in the bibliography. In citing
references I have given only those which are either directly quoted or
substantially relevant to the argument. I have avoided the common
practice of trying to legitimise statements by indicating that someone
(preferably famous) has said it before. If I were to adopt that practice
in this area then every sentence could have a string of names to it, and
the reader would be burdened with a much longer set of references.
The references given will, directly or indirectly, lead the reader to the
major areas of relevance. Finally, I have presented ideas in as
economical a manner as possible in the belief that the imaginative
reader will be able to elaborate the ideas more fully without losing the
main thread. Above all I hope this brief book will stimulate fresh
thought and action in visual communication.

David Sless
Adelaide
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Being the author is a dubious privilege: it ensures that someone can be

held responsible for the faults of the work. In so far as this work is
worthy of the readers’ attention, the credit must go to all those who
have shaped the author’s thought, provided the environment in which
the work developed, and helped in the intricate task of bringing the
work to fruition. If this book is lucid, clear and readable the credit
should go to Ruth Shrensky who carefully, meticulously and with
great intelligence transformed my clumsy prose as well as allowing
my obsessive preoccupation with this book to dominate our family life
over the past eighteen months.
My deepest intellectual gratitude goes to Professor Patrick Meredith
who first inspired my interest in communication. Many colleagues
have played a part in shaping my ideas. Flora Pearson, Richard
Rainer and Peter Welton helped me greatly to formulate my early
ideas about visual communication and I hope this book reflects
something of the spirit of our intense collaboration. My thanks to all
the students, over the years, who have taught me so much.
I would like to thank Paul Duncum, Vincent Megaw, Ted Nunan
and Val Presley for their helpful comments on various chapters of this
book. I have enjoyed the privilege of being supported throughout the
writing of this book by the Flinders University of South Australia. I
would particularly like to thank the Study Leave Committee for
allowing me time in which I was able to initiate this project. My thanks
to Frances Kelly, my agent, for her efforts and encouragement and to
Philip Hills for his patience and support during the writing of this
book. My thanks also to Lis Jansson who exercised much care and
attention when typing the manuscript.
Finally, I would like to thank Flinders University Photographic
Service who prepared many of the illustrations for publication and
Amanda Biggs for her meticulous work on the bibliography and the
index.
1 THE THINKING EYE

Introduction

This book is about the role of visual communication in learning. A

wide range of materials which convey information visually are used as
part of the education process, and at no other time has it been possible
to take advantage of such a rich variety of visual experience and
knowledge with so much ease; cheap printing, photography and
electronic processes are widely available. But this is not a book about
the hardware of visual communication, nor is it about the management
of that hardware, although indirectly it has something to say about
these. It is wholly concerned with how we think about visual
communication. How we use visual material in education depends to
a large extent on how we conceptualise it; what we expect it to do
depends on what we assume it to be capable of.
There is no single source, no authority, no body of knowledge
sufficiently well organised into a discipline which could be described
as the subject of visual communication. If one is foolhardy enough to
develop an interest in a subject which crosses many of the usual
subject boundaries then one must also face the consequence of such
an enterprise — namely one has to develop a framework, an
intellectual focus that enables one to make sense of all the disparate
fields which contribute to our understanding of that area of interest.
This then is an attempt to provide such a framework. In doing so I will
challenge many of the presuppositions that underlie current practice
and teaching, but my intent is constructive. Visual communication is
one of the most exciting and potentially useful tools in education if we
can understand how to exploit its richness.

Theory and Knowledge about Vision

I will begin this exploration of visual communication with a close look

at our knowledge and assumptions about vision. As vision is the
central process around which is constructed the overall process of
visual communication, it is useful to begin an account of the subject
from this focal point.

15
16 The Thinking Eye

The history of ideas about vision is one of the most fascinating

chapters in the development of human thought, within which we can
identify two contrasting approaches. Ideas stemming from the clas­
sical philosophical tradition separate vision from thinking and treat
each as discrete processes. This separation has been the basis of most
physiological and psychological research into vision and it is also at
the heart of the popular notion of vision. Vision is the province of the
eyes, a purely sensory process; thought is entirely a mental activity;
and the two are logically and biologically distinct.
In contrast, the tradition of thought stemming from the work of
Kant (1781) acknowledges no such distinction. Vision and thinking
are one process; they cannot be separated, either logically or
physiologically. It will be clear from the title of this chapter, ‘The
Thinking Eye’, that I take this latter view.
What is wrong then with the traditional approach?
First, the eye is not biologically separate from the brain. It is
actually part of the same organ; or more accurately, the brain is part of
the eye. In the development of the embryo (and in all probability the
evolution of the species), ‘the eyes are first to appear, the brain being a
subsequent outgrowth’ (Polyak, 1968, p. 767). In structural terms the
eyes have not grown out of the brain, the brain has receded from the
eyes.
Vision is the instigator of thought, not its handmaiden. Neural
tissue developed in order to make use of incoming visual information.
The evolutionary catalyst for the development of the brain was the
need to process visual information. Vision is the seat of intellect.
Secondly, the eye is not a recorder of visual information, even
though mechanical optical devices have often been used as an
analogy. Early studies of the eye progressed as a consequence of the
development of optics, when Kepler realised that the eye contained a
lens whose function is to focus the incoming light on to the retina at the
back of the eye. When later investigators peeled back the opaque coat
protecting the retina, they saw a small inverted image of whatever the
eyeball was pointing at. This retinal image was to have a profound but
misleading effect on the course of research and thinking, for the
optical similarities between the eye and the camera provide only a
very superficial basis for understanding vision, one fraught with
difficulties. It is necessary to explain what role this retinal image
plays, enabling us to see. The classical tradition, in separating vision
from thinking, generated the idea of a ‘mind’s eye’ which looked at the
retinal image. The problem was that you were left with the need to
The Thinking Eye 17

explain the way the mind’s eye worked and so on in an endless regress.
Another problem with the analogy is that the eye has a very poor
lens and the cone of clear vision is only 2°wide. (You can test this by
holding a coin out in front of you, fixating the centre and at the same
time trying to read the date at the edge. It cannot be done unless the
angle between the eye, centre and edge of the coin is less than two
degrees.)
Yet another complication arises as a consequence of the character­
istic movement of the eye. The eye is never at rest. It moves in a series
of jumps and between jumps it has a constant tremor, so that the
focused light is continually moving over the retinal field. A photo­
graphic plate under such conditions would simply be a blur. If the
image is stabilised under experimental conditions the retinal cells
become satiated and the object on which the eye is focused appears to
merge or disappear into the background (Pritchard, 1961).
This blurred retinal image has two other technical defects. At the
point where the optic nerve leaves the eye there are no light-sensitive
cells so that effectively there is a hole in the retinal image; and the
image is inverted. Yet none of these facts is registered in our
perception which is of a panoramic, stable, unperforated, upright
world. So the retinal image explains nothing but in its turn generates a
whole series of difficulties that require explanation.
If this were not enough, the retina itself, far from being a simple
array of light-sensitive receptors, is an intricate network of cells which
organise the incoming visual information before transmitting it along
the optic nerve fibre. There are over 100 million light-sensitive cells in
the retina. There is also a series of cells, called bipolar cells, which
interconnect across groups of light-sensitive cells, and connect these
to the ganglion cells that make up the optic nerve fibre. There are only
800,000 ganglion cells which of itself suggests that some condensation
or recoding of the retinal information takes place. In fact with the
development of microelectrode techniques it has been possible to
compare the information being presented to the eye with the
neurological activity in the brain, and it has been discovered that singe
neurons are ‘feature specific’; that is, each one responds to aparticular
line or a particular direction of movement rather than to a particular
focus on the retina. The analogy between eye and camera must finally
be laid to rest. The eye’s constructive integrative ability must cast
serious doubt on the idea that vision is a sensory process pure and
simple.
However the attempt to maintain the innocence of vision finds
18 The Thinking Eye

other than empirical grounds to sustain itself.

The sense-datum theory suggests that the raw stuff of vision are
patches of light and dark, colours and shapes, which through some
unspecified process of inference are transformed into our perceptions.
The problem with this is that to talk about patches of light, dark and
colour is even then to invoke a series of abstractions. There are many
ways of dividing the light around us into units and each different
method involves different abstracting principles. There can be no such
thing as ‘pure’ vision. The question then arises as to which abstracting
principles must be logically prior to all others and this is a philosophical
problem rather than a factual one.
It was towards this problem that Kant addressed his attention, by
suggesting that there could be no experience at all unless the mind
ordered its information, and the mind could not order experience
without some prior framework in which to do the ordering. Although
Kant did not actually concern himself with the problem of perception,
mainly wrestling with the nature of thinking, his arguments can be
used with equal force to resolve the paradoxes of vision outlined
above.
Despite our impression of completeness the mechanisms of vision
are structured to operate selectively. The narrow cone of clear vision
subtended from the eye means that only selected aspects of the visual
field can be examined at any one time.

The Optic Array

It would be a great mistake to think of the eyes as peculiarly inefficient

organs for performing the task of making sense of the visible world.
The human eye is the end-product of a long evolutionary process in
which the organism has adapted to the environment. The eyes more
than any other single sensory system have enabled organisms to
orientate themselves with respect to their physical environment. This
ecological view of vision has revealed an important basis of the way
we structure visual experience. Light arriving at the eye from the
objects in the world does so in a coherent form. It travels in straight
lines and as we or the objects move with respect to each other the light
changes in a consistent manner. As we walk past a series of posts
numbered 1 to 5, the light coming from the posts always presents a
consistent form. At no point does the order of the posts alter. It will
always be I ,2 ,3 ,4 ,5 o r 5 ,4 ,3 ,2 ,1,never say, 3 ,1 ,4 ,2 ,5 . Moreover
The Thinking Eye 19

we can predict what the information available to the eye will be from
any point of regard because light behaves consistently. This coherence,
or set of rules, is there as the basis for any organism’s orientation
in space. It is called the optic array.
So far we do not need Kant’s revolutionary notions of the way the
mind structures experience. An ordered structure exists in the
environment. That however is only part of the explanation since the
organism musteithersleamthe rules which govern the transformations
of the optic array as either the organism or objects in the world move,
or else those rules must be built into the visual system. Either way,
there does have to be a mental ability to ‘read’ the optic array. At the
very minimum it is necessary to postulate some readiness on the part
of an organism to learn about the optic array. However even if it is
assumed that some satisfactory account can be given of this and that
the overall framework of perception is guaranteed by the coherent
structure of light, it still remains necessary to explain how it is that an
organism selects certain features of the environment for attention
rather than others. All the optic array tells us is that whatever we look
at will behave consistently with respect to our own movement through
space, and that if it moves we will be able to read its movement in a
consistent way. W hat it does not tell us is which detectable feature
within the enormous range of detectable features within any optic
array we should attend to. For that we need some other explanation.

Schemata and Objectification

It is here that we turn to Kant’s notion of Schema and its contemporary

elaboration. Simply put, schematism is the process of organising
experience. It is a concept with very wide application since it not only
allows for the organising of visual experience but of all mental
activity. In this text we will only be concerned with a limited range of
schemata, those relating to visual communication, but these are
themselves embedded within the general schemata that determine the
way we select and use all visual information. These in their turn are
embedded within the general schemata that determine the pattern of
behaviour of the whole organism.
Here we have a key notion in understanding vision as a thinking
process. The eye’s selective organising capacity is directed by
schemata and these schemata are learnt. An example of the operation
at one level of schemata can be seen in Figure 1. It may not be readily
20 The Thinking Eye

Figure 1: Hidden Figure

Source: After Dallenbach, American Journal o f Psychology (University of Illinois

Press). Copyright © by the Board of Trustees, University of Illinois.

apparent what the figure represents, that is you may not have the
necessary schema to hand that will enable you to read it. If I provide
you with the necessary schema by telling you that is a picture of a cow
you may now be able to read the picture. If its form still eludes you
look at Figure 2 and you will find an outline that will give you the
correct schema. It should now be possible to make sense of the
picture. The transformation that has occurred is a dramatic demon­
stration of the mutability of vision and it bears close analysis.
First, the schema is a framework which enables us to select winch
fragments are to be pieced together and which are to be ignored.
Secondly, once the schema is established it is remarkably stable, so
much so that it is difficult if not impossible to look at the picture in the
way we did before the schema was formed. Thirdly and most
interestingly the change that occurred seemed to do so before one’s
eyes.
I say ‘before one’s eyes’ because that is the impression we had. We
know that the picture has not changed and yet there is a strong
impression that a change has taken place outside ourselves. The only
The Thinking Eye 21

change is in our visual thinking, but we tend to externalise that change.

We objectify it. We treat it as if it were part of an objective world
outside ourselves which we are observing. This notion of objecti­
fication is extremely important in our understanding of visual thinking
and the peculiar learning problems posed by visual communications. I
shall have occasion to return to this central issue in later sections.
The main lesson of this example is that vision is a mutable process.
The extent of its mutability is an open question because the history of
vision has been dominated by the erroneous view that vision is a
sensory process, hence unchangeable, merely recording ‘what is
there’.

Visual Literacy

In many areas of knowledge where observation forms a central role,

one of the primary tasks of the educator is to develop in the student an
ability to structure, organise and give meaning to visible evidence.
Many forms of visual narrative demonstration and explanation exist
as common cultural objects in print, photography, film and electronic
media. The expertise which has led to these has not come from the
psychologist’s laboratory but from the accumulated traditions of
practice in the arts of communication. Our ability to read this material
is almost taken for granted, but it does have to be learnt and the
sophistication with which we can accomplish that task is proportional
to the amount of effort we expend in educating vision. Visual literacy
and fluency are skills, discernible and distinguishable from literacy
and numeracy which form the backbone of our educational system,
but they are not subjected to anything like the intensity of teaching that
students are given in language and mathematics.
The skill of reading the written language is an example of a highly
specialised visual skill. But we only have a scant knowledge of how it
is mastered and the processes that make it possible. ‘Rapid reading
represents an achievement as impossible in theory as it is common­
place in practice’ (Neisser, 1967, p. 137). If we could imagine a non­
literate society armed with our current knowledge of psychology
reacting to the proposal that reading were possible, we would expect
them to dismiss the idea as a wild fancy. This bizarre and unlikely
fable is an important caution. First, we should not put too much faith
in current psychologicaltheory which cannot even explain very
common-place visual skills; and secondly we should not assume that
22 The Thinking Eye

the present level of visual ability is at its highest point of development.

Laboratory studies can only measure existing skilled performance. It
is not possible on the basis of present knowledge to predict what
sophisticated visual abilities could be developed.
So the implications of vision as a mutable process are far reaching
and the psychological and philosophical theories which lead us to this
conclusion must in a certain sense now be abandoned, because they
can only take us part of the way towards an understanding of the
educational role of vision and visual material. They will remain in the
background of our considerations. The central concepts of schema
and objectification will be used throughout this text, but we will refer
increasingly to those areas where visual expertise is of a practical kind
and the knowledge employed is very often the tacit knowledge of the
practitioner.

Figure 2: Hidden Figure Revealed

References
Banham, Reyner . Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (The Architectural
Press, London, 1960). A useful guide to some of the ideas which are at the
foundation of contemporary philosophy of practice in design.
Barthes, Roland . Rhtorique de lImage, Communications, vol. 4 (1964), also in
Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (Fontana/Collins, Glasgow, 1977).
Seminal influence on so-called deep qualitative content analysis of pictures.
Bartlett, C.F. Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology
(Cambridge University Press, London, 1932). A classic study of important
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Gombrich, E.H. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial
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Gombrich, E.H. The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art
(Phaidon Press, Oxford, 1979). These two books are companions; the first dealing
with the psychology of pictorial representation and the second dealing with pattern
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further. Gombrich is erudite and profound in his insights but can be infuriatingly
vague while remaining compellingly readable.
Hartley, James . Designing Instructional Text (Kogan Page, London, 1978). Useful
as a guide to the economies which can be made in printing instructional texts by
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Ivins, William J. Jr. Prints and Visual Communication (Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, Mass., 1953). It is a great shame that the ideas in the early chapters of
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provide some useful pointers.
Kepes, Gyorgy . Language of Vision (Paul Theobold, Chicago 1969, first published
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Macdonald-Ross, Michael . How Numbers are Shown: A Review of Research on
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to all involved in educational technology.
Stewart, Ann Harleman . Graphic Representation of Models in Linguistic Theory
(Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1976). Studies of this kind are rare and
despite a number of weaknesses it is an area of research which needs
encouraging. This study provides some insight into the relation between basic
scientific research and visual communication.
Wright, Patricia . The Quality Control of Document Design, Information Design
Journal, vol. 1, no. 1 (1979), pp. 33-42. The most straightforward account of
research strategies available in document design. Unfortunately the concept of
quality control is a little inappropriate.
Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory (Penguin Books, Harmonds-worth,
Middlesex, 1978). The power of the visual to sustain complex intellectual activity in
an area of forgotten scholarship is revealed in this fascinating book which traces
the history of memory systems from ancient Greece to the seventeenth century.
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The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA.
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Middlesex, 1956).
Balchin, W.G.V. and Coleman, Alice M. Graphicacy should be the Fourth Ace in
the Pack, Times Educational Supplement, 5 Nov. 1965.
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Press, London, 1960).
Barthes, Roland . Elements of Semiology, trans. Annette Levers and Colin Smith
(Hill and Wang, New York, 1967a).
Barthes, Roland Rhtorique de lImage, Communications, vol. 4 (1964), also in
Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (Fontana/Collins, Glasgow, 1977).
Barthes, Roland Systeme de la mode (Seuil, Paris, 1967b).
Bartlett, C.F. Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology
(Cambridge University Press, London, 1932).
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