Customer Reviews

Upside-Down Brilliance: The Visual Spatial Learner

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Two years ago, I had my son tested at the Gifted Development Center (run by the author), and found that he was a visual-spatial learner. He's a very bright kid with a great building/inventing aptitude and imagination. He understands higher mathematics, but it took 2 years to learn all the addition facts (which are still not fast). He has an incredibly good reading comprehension, but has a very difficult time spelling. He was a frustrating child because he seemed so bright, yet struggled with the simplest things. The GDC gave me some tips on teaching visual-spatial learners (which helped), but until I read this book, I didn't know that I didn't have much of a clue of what a visual-spatial learner was!

Essentially, visual-spatial learners (VSLs) are more right-brained thinkers and tend to visualize everything at all once. Left-brained thinkers are auditory-sequential learner (ASLs)- they learn by hearing and do things in order. Not everyone is just a VSL or an ASL, many are combinations of both. The hard part comes for children who are mostly VSLs. The schools teach to ASLs, and that is the type of student who does well.

This book really gave me a whole new perspective on how my son learns, and it gave me many great tips of how and why to apply certain teaching strategies. Fortunately, I am able to homeschool him -- otherwise I think he would really struggle in public school and start to think that he was dumb (which he is
anything but!)

The author estimates that at least 30% of children are VSLs. The author's style is fun and very readable. The examples she gives are interesting to read, but they are often extreme cases from very gifted children. At first, this led me to believe that she was saying all VSLs are gifted (which they are not.) It's just that she has a background in working with gifted children and so that is her perspective. So rather or not your child is gifted, this book can help.

I think all parents and teachers should read this book. It's an interesting perspective in learning styles and it's a lot easier to incorporate in the classroom to accomodate these two learning styles than other methods such as the multiple intelligences suggested by Howard Gardner.

I never knew it, but I don't think like most people. I thought everyone recalled things in bright, colorful pictures, often with sound bites, sometimes even with smells. I assumed that everyone remembered the words in books by remembering where they lay on the page, interspersed with the book's illustrations. That's how I remember, how I think, how I learn... in Upside-Down Brilliance I learned that I am a visual-spatial learner.

Upside-Down Brilliance begins by defining the visual-spatial learner (VSL) in a "coconut shell." We aren't easy to define, but Silverman does a thorough job. And reading her description of the auditory-sequential learner was an "aha!" moment for me - I never realized how differently most people think.

Dr. Silverman explains the VSLs use of the right brain hemisphere, and uncovers the complications of early ear infections and auditory processing issues, organizational difficulties and AD/HD, even introversion and extraversion and how they interact in the VSL. She explains why VSLs don't fit well with the auditory-sequential educational style of the typical school. And she offers suggestions on how to help these children fit in and learn comfortably in the classroom.

Identification and assessment of VSL are illustrated by case studies including test profiles and descriptions, from the casual parental identification by characteristics and preferred playthings, to the professional identification and assessment by standardized ability and other assessments.

After comparing gifted learning disabled and gifted VSL children, discussing parenting and teaching recommendations, Dr. Silverman concludes with a chapter on VSL adults, including imposter syndrome and VSL women (yes, we do exist, though we are a minority within a minority!).

Upside-Down Brilliance contains so much great information, you'll need to read it more than once. There's so much great information in it that I find myself stopping, going off to deal with what I just learned, and coming back later to continue with the next chapter. I wish someone had explained years ago why my kids and I learn so differently!

In Upside-Down Brilliance, Dr. Silverman takes her readers on an engaging journey through her work and her findings. The book is full of the type of in-depth, technical information that psychologists and educators will find crucial in applying her work, such as detailed explorations of assessment and testing issues -- interspersed with a conversational tone filled with anecdotes and examples, illustrated throughout with delightful and very apt cartoons (the work of Buck Jones), that will entice parents and picture-thinking adults. Added to that is a very healthy dose of practical advise and suggestions for parents and teachers.

To me, one of the most significant results of Dr. Silverman's research is the fact that fully one-third of schoolchildren appear to be strong visual-spatial learners, while less than a quarter are strongly auditory-sequential. (The remainder have heterogenous or mixed learning styles). This illustrates the strong need for educational reform, as most schools are geared to the auditory-sequential student (who learns best by listening and step-by-step instruction). Unfortunately, the group of students who learn well primarily by this approach is surprisingly small -- no wonder so many students fall through the cracks!

Parents of dyslexic children will be interested in Dr. Silverman's exploration of the overlap of her work with Ron Davis (author of The Gift of Dyslexia). Dr. Silverman presents detailed information, drawing on findings of brain researchers as well as her own studies, to show why traditional teaching methods, such as phonetic approaches to reading, leave many VSL's frustrated and confused.

I can't recommend this book enough. It is the book that parents should start out with when their kids are young - and the books that parents of dyslexic kids should keep to answer the question "what do we do now?" after the reading issues or other academic problems associated with dyslexia are addressed.

Basically, if you are the parent (or teacher) of a VSL, this is the guidebook you need to have. If you don't know whether your kid is a VSL, then this is the book you need to have to find out. (And if your academically struggling kid has recently been assessed by a professional who reports that the child is "verbal" - this is the book you need to provide the foundation for a second opinion, as Dr. Silverman busts a few myths about the widely-used WISC-III assessment test).

"Upside down Brialliance..." was a life changing book for me. I now understand why corporate meetings drive me to distraction. I can easily see where the meeting should go in my head. Others in the room, who I now understand think in a more sequential manner, have to talk through each step in order to feel comfortable that the final goal has been reached. I also understand that when I state with confidence the goal we are all trying to reach the reason why others in the meeting want a step by step, detailed approach on how I arrived at my conclusions. I used to find this very frustrating. Couldn't the other team members just "see" the goal? I had no idea that most other people do not think in pictures.

Dr. Silverman's book helped me understand how I think, how my husband and daughter think and how most of the rest of the world thinks. Now instead of getting frustrated during meetings, I am able to sit back and wait until the other auditory sequential learners arrive at the same place I am. I am also able to explain to other team members how I think. As a result, other team members know now to hand me a chart or a table and not a wordy document.

This book is for parents of children who like to take things apart and put them back together, who get frustrated when teachers insist that they show their work, who think differently than the other children at schoool. The book is packed full of information on how to interpret test results and how to help both the auditory sequential and visual spatial learner. Any parent can use this book to help their visual spatial child feel more "normal" in an auditory sequential world. Educators in particular need to read this book. Once a teacher has read this book, they will be less likely to become frustrated with a visual spatial learner and will better know how to teach them. I highly recommend this book.

I'm told this book is unavailable as we wait for the second printing. In the meantime, I found very useful information on Silverman's website: www.visualspatial.org, including some insightful articles.

--mom of a VS learner

This is a very special resource for discovering the very special learning abilities in your life and the lives of those you love. If one-third of a given learning population is predominately visual-spatial by nature,then you probably know someone with these very special learning strengths. What can be said for addressing their very special learning needs? Traditional education has let many of us/these folks slip through the cracks. This book is full of information/strategies necessary to pull them up again! Visual-spatial learners are all around us, and you may be one too. Find out with Linda Silverman's no-nonsense, user-friendly book, and celebrate the awesome learning strengths/gifts you/your students/your children have always had but were rarely encouraged share.

This book is worth buying. As a teacher and a visual-spatial learner myself, this book explained why school was so frustrating for me and my child. It gives the reader some tools to help students...and explains why a certain percentage of students have difficulty in a typical classroom. It is non-judgemental (extremely rare in academic and literature circles) of these learner types and should be a must read for every k-12 teacher.

As a mother, wife and daughter of visual - spatial learners, this book has been truly revealing and uplifting! It has helped me understand my children at home and become a better advocate for them at school. At work, I know understand and appreciate many co-workers who are visual spatial learners.

Thank you Linda for helping to change so many people's lives!

This long awaited volume addresses a topic that many feel they know about, but very few really do. Presumptions about the true characteristics of visual-spatial learners were rampant. MAny have not proven true. Many other facts about V-S-Ls are now revealed with great clarity and the concept of a Visual Spatial Learner can be used with much greated empirical certainty than the over-generalized assumptions that prevailed before publication. Don't miss this one is you are an educator, psychologist, or just want to know about kids.

I am ready to accept that this is a very important book, the best of its kind. People are paying nearly $200.00 for a used copy--none of which goes to the author. Clearly, there is a need and a demand for this book. Why on earth is this book not in print? Is the author working on getting a reprint or a 2nd edition together? Please let us know! There are parents and professionals who need this resource available!