"I am fully aware of the shortcomings of directional clues that consist of only words, and not pictograms. The latter are far more efficient than the written words.
I have never understood the penchant for writing "WALK" and "STOP" at a crosswalk. Use icons, dimwits.... CFL"
Claus, that statement alone tells me that your brain and mine model the world rather differently. I find most icon type signs so useless, that I have walked into womens' toilets, run the wrong software, parked in the wrong place, boiled shirts which should have been dry cleaned, etc., for most of my life. Maybe it's the good readers who are a danger in traffic.
I can READ, for Ed's sake! I stopped using picture books when I was four!
(I can't type, but that's a different issue).
Yes, I can use stupid hyeroglyphic signs if I have to - in Arabic or Asian countries for instance, where I can't read the script, but I have to think about them. I'm picture blind, whatever the heck that's called. I don't know what I look like till I look in the mirror - and I forget again about two minutes later, unless I actually describe myself in words. I don't bother with an avatar, because I truly can't understand why anyone would. I would probably not recognise it.
On the other hand, I'm an excellent map reader, because I studied the subject till I was.
I learned to read so young I don't really recall doing it. I have memories, but I think they are from stories I was told much later. My first day in school, the teacher gave out reading books. She then went round the class several times doling out jotters, pencils etc. About orbit five, I gave her the reading book back, having finished it.
Whether my brain was hard wired better to cope with text than pictures, or whether it was trained that way by my early learning, I don't know. I do know I ended up unable to visualise and with no love of diagrams and pictures.
I wonder if people who happen to acquire pictorial or spatial ability early,- the artists and sportsmen- simply bias their brains that way and are thereafter considered dyslexic because they have selected a different neural bias?
