Lateral and Vertical Thinking
Vertical Thinking
• Thinking that is generally linear and using information that
follows through to the solution or conclusion.
• Also known as convergent thinking
• Vertical thinking is selective
• Always goes in the general direction
• Analytical and sequential
• A finite process
Lateral Thinking - Lateral thinking is thinking that is generally
branching or mind mapping and collects to a central solution or
conclusion.
• Problem solving by apparently illogical means
• The process and a willingness to look at things in a different
way
• Complementary to analytical and critical thinking
• Can lead to intuitive problem solving
• Generative
• Generates direction
• Provocative
• Does not follow sequence
• Probabilistic
Oxford English dictionary definition
A way of thinking which seeks the solution to intractable
problems through unorthodox methods which would normally be
ignored by logical thinking.
Techniques in Lateral Thinking
• Generate alternatives
• Choosing different entry points
• Thinking caps -- Red: feelings, hunches, intuition -- Black:
risk assessment, judgment, caution -- White: objective look
at the data, and information -- yellow: logical, positive
feasibility and benefits -- Green: new ideas and creative
thinking -- Blue: control of the thinking process
• Random input
• Focus -- simple/general or specific/purposeful
• Dominance ideas and crucial factors
• Challenging assumptions
According to David Khan and J. Allen Hobson of the dreaming
brain is a self organizing system.
Teaching Thinking
• Free association stimulates divergent thinking (Rico)
• Lateral thinking open-mindedness, emotional orientation,
logical negative, logical positive, alternative, and pragmatic
exercises stimulate lateral thinking
• Challenging perceptions increased conceptions stimulate
inverted thinking.
Tools for Divergent Thinking
• Use of the metaphor
• Six hats of de bono
• Random input
• Feedback loops and system arch types using stocks and
flow
• Visual thinking -- mind maps, models, charts, timelines, and
even cartoons (illustrated metacognition)
• Many layered or many leveled computer games and
software
Brain-based Learning
• Parallel processing (tasting and smelling of the same time)
• Learning engaging whole physiology
• Patterning
• Emotions
• Processing whole or parts simultaneously
• Focused attention and peripheral perception simultaneously
• Conscious and unconscious processes
• Spatial and rote memory
• Embedding of facts
• Challenge enhancement and threat inhibition
• 3 techniques of all of brain based learning are: orchestrated
immersion (complete learning environment), relaxed
alertness (eliminating fears and threat), active processing
(consolidate and initialize information)
• Feedback is from reality rather than authority
• Realistic problem solving
• Holism
• Laughing
Learning as a Complex System*
• Chaotic dynamics
• Description of the physical world
• Social dynamic
• Holism
• Fundamental uncertainty and uncertainty due to lack of
knowledge
• Transitional knowledge, transcendental knowledge,
• Noise
• In the noise and signal system
• Dysfunction and misconception and preconception
• Unintended consequences
*Santa Fe Institute in 1995 a collection of essays entitled the
mind the brain and complex adaptive systems.
An elementary principle of human psychology -- at persons
wants and desires influence more than his behaviour. When a
person is confronted by ideas are facts that are not at odds with
his pre-existing notions the result is cognitive dissonance. This
is a sort of static in the brain with the power to distort, block, or
insight perception.
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