| With the explosion of hypertext and hypermedia into our daily lives and writing space, we have already begun to reconceptualize how to communicate in this new electronic space. As a highly visual-spatial medium, hypertext has done more than redefine writing; it has changed the ways in which we think about reading and writing. Hypertexts require us to perceive information in three-dimensional landscapes, using our cognitive abilities to interpret visual information and navigate space. Visual thinking can also explain how we interpret and design information in this new electronic writing space.;The purpose of this dissertation is to examine how theories of visual thinking operate and reach their limitations in hypertext systems. After reviewing theories of visual thinking, derived from Gestalt theory, this study applies these ideas directly to two hypertext systems, one closed and one open, with different purposes, to determine how visual thinking works in both environments. This study also presents findings from a classroom study designed to measure student responses to reading hypertexts, and how they use visual thinking in their design processes. This work contributes a unique approach to the way writers and readers think when they design and interpret hypertexts. It argues that theories of visual thinking offer more than a guide to good style, but rather serve to explain how we interpret and design hypertexts.;While visual thinking governs how readers interpret and design hypertexts to some extent, it cannot explain every aspect of reader response. Situated between print and electronic modes of communication, students already demonstrate visual and spatial thinking in their responses to reading hypertexts. They also rely heavily on spatial, graphic and textual components, as well as Web-based conventions to conceptualize and design information in electronic space. We can best enrich our teaching methods by including subjects such as visual rhetoric, graphic design, software programs, scripting languages and visual thinking principles that address this method of thinking. Rather, visual thinking can be used as a model to guide our thinking in hyperspace, in developing a rhetoric of hypertexts. |
