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Post author: [Rj](/content/blog/author/rspencer/ "Posts by Rj"/index.html)
Post published: January 25, 2023
Post category: Blog
Post comments: 0 Comments

The ability to create vivid visual mental images — visualisation — is an important skill for engineers and designers, as it allows them to understand and communicate their designs effectively. However, a recent research paper in Cortex, “ Visual imagery vividness declines across the lifespan” by Erzsébet Gulyása and her colleagues has found that there is a surprising and previously undocumented declining visualisation capability with biological age.

This discovery has significant implications for all fields that rely on visualisation skills. The declining ability to elicit vivid visual mental images in middle age could affect our ability to appreciate innovative designs and communicate spatial ideas effectively. The study suggests that the vividness of visual mental imagery is shaped by biological factors, and there is a natural tendency for less vivid mental images with both maturation and aging.

Future studies are needed to determine the prevalence of genetically based extremes and the effects of frequent and focused visualisation, such as standard design or engineering practice, to ensure that engineers and other professionals understand these changes and can work around them.

It seems reasonable to suggest that as we age and visualisation becomes less vivid, we rely more on experience to compensate. However, experience is inherently backward-looking, relying on examples that have worked in the past and as such is somewhat biased away from new or innovative solutions. More concerningly, a diminished capability for visualisation may mean that we don’t fully grasp (or perhaps worse, misunderstand) innovations suggested by our younger colleagues.

One part of the solution to this problem is using xSpace, a technology that allows engineers to step inside their CAD models and understand designs in a more immersive way. By removing the need for visualisation, xSpace helps any design or engineering team communicate better about the spaces that they are creating. It seems now that it can also help to mitigate the effects of age-related decline in visualisation, allowing older engineers to continue to fully understand and appreciate new innovations at their full potential.

The study surveyed 2252 participants between the ages of 12 and 60 using the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ) and found that the decline was more pronounced in males and was associated with both a decrease in the proportion of individuals with vivid visual imagery and an increase in the proportion of individuals with low imagery vividness.

We’re looking forward to learning more about this phenomenon now that it has been discovered by science.

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Tags: age, innovation, management, mental images, visual imagery, visualization