“I see what you mean.” “That sounds right.” “I can’t grasp it.” NLP says these phrases reveal whether you think mainly in pictures, sounds or feelings. It is a tidy theory, and a popular one in education too.
The NLP idea
NLP describes three main representational systems:
- Visual (V): pictures and images
- Auditory (A): sounds and inner talk
- Kinaesthetic (K): feelings and bodily sensations
(Smell and taste are sometimes added.) Each person is said to have a preferred system, shown by the words they use, called predicates. NLP practitioners are taught to match those words (“I see you’re looking for a clear picture”) to build rapport.
What the research found
Predicate matching. In the 1980s researchers tested whether people really have a preferred system and whether matching it helps. Reviews, including those by Sharpley, found little support for either idea.
Learning styles. The same idea turned up in education as “VAK learning styles”: teach visual learners with pictures, auditory learners with talk and so on. In a major 2008 review, Pashler and colleagues looked for rigorous evidence that matching teaching to a student’s style improves learning. They found virtually none, and the few well-designed studies contradicted it.
People do have preferences. But preferences are not the same as results: someone who says they’re a visual learner doesn’t learn better when taught that way.
What is true
- Language is full of sensory metaphor. That is natural and says little about how a person thinks.
- Imagery varies. People differ in how vivid their mental pictures are, from very strong to none at all (aphantasia).
- Using several senses helps. Combining pictures, words and doing generally helps learning more than a single channel.
- Imagery is useful in hypnosis. Suggestions that engage sight, sound and body sensation tend to be richer (see hypnosis series, part 49).
How to use it sensibly
- Don’t pigeonhole people. “You’re a visual person” is a guess.
- Ask, don’t infer. “What would help you most?” works better than reading predicates.
- Mix the senses when you teach, explain or write a script.
- Meet people where they are. If someone has no mental pictures, don’t insist on “visualise”.
In hypnotherapy
A good practitioner offers a range: “you might see, hear or just sense it.” This lets each person use whatever comes naturally and makes it hard to fail.
The bottom line
The three-systems theory is neat but unproven, and “match the learner’s style” does not work. The practical lesson is simpler: use all the senses and let people choose.
Next in the series: The Fast Phobia Cure and the Swish Pattern: NLP’s Best-Known Techniques
This article is for general information and is not medical advice.