How to Coach Yourself and Others Better Coaching Through Visualisation | Page 162

Recent studies have found that individual differences in VVIQ
scores can be used to predict changes in a person's brain while
visualizing different activities. Functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) was used to study the association between early
visual cortex activity relative to the whole brain while participants
visualized themselves or another person bench pressing or stair
climbing. Reported image vividness correlates significantly with the
relative fMRI signal in the visual cortex. Thus individual differences
in the vividness of visual imagery can be measured objectively.
Logie, Pernet, Buonocore and Della Sala (2011) used behavioural
and fMRI data for mental rotation from individuals reporting vivid
and poor imagery on the VVIQ. Groups differed in in brain
activation patterns suggesting that the groups performed the same
tasks in different ways. These findings help to explain the lack of
association previously reported between VVIQ scores and mental
rotation performance.
10.6 Training and learning styles
Some educational theorists have drawn from the idea of mental
imagery in their studies of learning styles. Proponents of these
theories state that people often have learning processes which
emphasize visual, auditory, and kinesthetic systems of
experience.[citation needed] According to these theorists, teaching in
multiple overlapping sensory systems benefits learning, and they
encourage teachers to use content and media that integrates well
with the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic systems whenever possible.
Educational researchers have examined whether the experience of
mental imagery affects the degree of learning. For example,
imagining playing a 5-finger piano exercise (mental practice)
resulted in a significant improvement in performance over no mental
practice — though not as significant as that produced by physical
practice. The authors of the study stated that "mental practice alone
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