When you think, do you think in words or images?

In a way, this simple question started it all.

It was a question we routinely asked in the early 1980s of participants who took our business-writing workshops. In other words, if I mention the word "boat," can you see the image of a boat, or the actual word?

Words or images? A McLuhanesque question, if I ever heard one. Which of course it was, put forward by my partner at the time, Dr. Eric McLuhan.

McLuhan: The name in communication, earned by Eric's father, Dr. Marshall McLuhan, media guru, academic — and probably the world's most famous theorist on communication and media studies.

Many people don't realize the McLuhans were among the first to undertake left-and right-brain research.

Their research led to insights that people think in either words or images. Our preference indicated a bias in our thinking: left-brain-dominated people tend to think more in words; right-brained people tend to think more in images.

This bias indicated to us how to successfully approach an audience, and how to approach communication-skills training.

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© 2010 McLuhan & Davies Communications, Inc.