Strategy submodalities
The strategy elicitation on the previous page was based on the major sensory modalities - Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, Olfactory and Gustatory.
For many strategies a surface level strategy elicitation such as this will be perfectly adequate, but circumstances also often arise which necessitate chunking down to a finer level of detail in the elicitation process. Typical examples might include:-
- Where replication of the strategy does not produce the expected results it may be necessary to 'drill down' to find the specific sensory difference that makes a difference
- Comparing and contrasting two strategies which, despite being identical at the surface level, produce completely different results
- To facilitate fine detail level changes to the strategy, or tweaks if you prefer, which will result in equally finely detailed modifications to the outcomes which arise from it.
These sub qualities of the sensory modalities are known as submodalities.
Submodalities are the very building blocks of experience and are covered in some detail on these pages.
To recap briefly, each of the sights, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells that make up our experience of the world will have certain, very specific qualities which serve to allow us to make very fine distinctions in our measurements of that experience.
For example, pictures will have a size, a shape, a location, a brightness, a contrast ratio, a colour saturation and so on, sounds will have pitch, loudness, phase, direction, distance and timbre. etc. etc.
Extending the strategy elicitation process down to the level of submodalities can signficantly enhance the quality and accuracy of the results obtained from the process and any subsequent uses those elicited strategies are put to.