use all of their senses (whether consciously or unconsciously), and that whilst one system may seem to dominate, this is often contextualized – globally there is a balance that dynamically varies according to circumstance and mood. NLP asserts that for most circumstances and most people, three of the five sensory based modes seem to dominate in mental processing: visual thoughts – sight, mental imagery, spatial awareness auditory (or linguistic) thoughts – sound, speech, dialog, white noise kinesthetic (or proprioceptive) sense – somatic feelings in the body, temperature, pressure, and also emotion. The other two senses, gustatory (taste) and olfactory (smell), which are closely associated, often seem to be less significant in general mental processing, and are often considered jointly as one. For this reason, one often sees the term VAK in NLP reference texts, to signify these three primary representational systems, as well as the term 4-tuple (or VAKOG) if the author wishes to include all senses including taste/smell. The same term is also known as First Access (John Grinder), or primary experience (Freud). Notation and strategies In documenting mental strategies and processing by the senses, NLP practitioners often use a simple shorthand for different modalities, with a letter indicating the representation system concerned, and often, a superscript to indicate how that system is being used. Three key aspects are commonly notated: The representation system being used (visual/V, auditory/A, kinesthetic/K, and occasionally, O/G), whether the direction of attention is internal (i) or external (e), and whether the event is a recollection of an actual past event (r) or construction of an imaginary event (c). Due to its importance in human cognitive processing, auditory internal dialogue, or talking in one's head, has its own shorthand: Aid. Putting these together, this is a very simplified example of some steps which might actually be involved in replying to a simple question such as "Do you like that dress?". The table below is useful for teaching how to identify and access each representational system in context: {| class="wikitable" |- ! Step !! Activity ||Notation !! What it's being used for |- | 1 || auditory external || Ae || Hear the question |- | 2 || visual internal || Vi || picture to oneself the meaning of the question |- | 3 || visual external || Ve || look at the dress |- | 4 || visual internal constructed || Vic || create a