Pictures may be final word in text

Pictures could soon end the clumsiness of text on mobile phones, a psychologist said today.

A new messaging "language" could easily be constructed using pictures and abstract images, according to Professor Simon Garrod.

He has found that when two people communicate solely by drawing pictures, their dialogues rapidly turn into something very like spoken conversation.

In time the pictures used by both people become simpler and more schematic or abstract.

Both sides begin to understand each other purely through the exchange of images, he told the British Association Annual Science Festival at Leicester University.

In the end they develop symbolic pictures of which only they know the meaning.

Professor Garrod said research results "indicate that new communication technologies may open up new means of communication when spoken communication is difficult or impossible."

The experiments involved a version of the popular game Pictionary, except that concepts were drawn from a fixed list known to both participants.

One participant, known as "the matcher", had to identify the concept drawn on a whiteboard by the other participant, "the director", from a set of 16 alternatives.

These included easily confused items and names such as art gallery, museum, parliament, theatre, Robert de Niro, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger.