Humans have five senses: vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. The most important sensory organs are our eyes. We rely on our sight to collect more than 80% of information about our world. Humans are biologically wired to process the world visually, and visual cues are part of our everyday life: at crosswalks, traffic lights, or signs. Our brains are trained for this and tend to prioritize visual information.
In addition, other scientific research supports the benefits of sketchnoting. Allan Pavio discovered in 1971 that visual and verbal information are processed differently along distinct channels and stored separately in our memory. However, if two different representations of the same information are provided, both visual and verbal, a link is created.
The information is encoded and stored twice; this is known as the “Dual Coding Theory”. When stored twice, the information is more firmly anchored and can be recalled more quickly. Therefore, adding visuals to your simple text notes can boost your learning and help you retain information over time.
