What You See Is Not What Your Brain Gets

Can you read this?:

Aoccdrnig to reserach at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, the oredr of lteetrs in a wrod is nto vrey iprmoetnt. Waht mttaers is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The ohter letetrs can be a ttoal mses and you can sitll raed wthuot mcuh probelm. Tihs is bcauseae yuor brian deos not raed ervey lteter, but raeds wrods and gruops of wrods.

I came across a similar paragraph in a book on Cognitive Psychology (Solso, 2005).

What our eyes see is not what our brain ends up with – We think that we are walking around looking at the world around us with our eyes, and that our eyes are sending information to the brain which processes it and gives us a realistic experience of “what’s out there”. But the truth is that what our brain comes up with is not exactly what our eyes are actually seeing.

The great interpreter – Our brain is constantly interpreting everything it sees. Take, for example, the picture below:

What do you see? Your first reaction is probably that you are looking at a triangle with a black border in the background, and a white triangle upside down on top of it. Of course that’s not really what is there, is it? What’s there are some partial lines and some partial circles. Your brain creates the shape of an upside down triangle out of blank space, because that is what it is expecting to see. This particular illusion is called a Kanizsa triangle, named after an Italian psychologist (G. Kanizsa) that first came up with it in 1955.

Shortcuts to the world – Our brains create these shortcuts in order to try and quickly make sense out of the world around us. There are so many (millions) of sensory inputs coming into our brain every second, that it has to try to make it all make sense. So it uses rules of thumb, and extrapolates what it has experience with, to make guesses about what it is seeing. Most of the time that works, but sometimes it causes errors.

What you design may not be what people see – The take-away is that what we think people are going to see may not be what they do see. It might depend on their background, knowledge, familiarity with what they are looking at, and expectations. Conversely, we might be able to persuade people to see things in a certain way, depending on how they are presented. Here’s another example from the Solso book:

By using different colored backgrounds we can draw attention and change the meaning of the sign.

What do you think? Do you think designers use these principles to draw attention on purpose? If you are a designer do you use these ideas? If we can read so well with all these misspellings, are typos even a problem?

Here’s the Solso book reference: Cognitive Psychology, edited by Solso, 7th edition, Allyn and Bacon, 2005.

By: http://www.businessinsider.com/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-part-2#what-you-see-is-not-what-your-brain-gets-1

#4 Question on Freud's theory on iceberg

"What does it mean if all of the things that Freud classified as unconscious in the mental iceberg drawing are very conscious to me and I constantly think about them?"

It means that you’re more ‘in-touch’ with your thoughts, actions and emotions and that other ‘things’ will be within your unconscious. 

Nobodies unconscious are the same. It’s made up of memories, desires, fears and motives that we’re unaware of. They ‘drive’/influence our behavior and are usually accessible with the help of therapy.

Please note that the unconscious is a theory and has never been tested as ‘real’. The diagram is to explain Freud’s idea of consciousness and someone has added those feelings/emotions to give an example of what’s in there. 

Don’t believe everything on the internet as fact.

#3 Question on tests to tell which intelligence we exhibit most of

"Do you know any good tests to tell which intelligence we exhibit most of?"

A quick search has found these two. They’re based on Gardner’s (1983) multiple intelligence.

1. Scroll down here to find the free tests, and to read all about his theory.

(http://www.businessballs.com/howardgardnermultipleintelligences.htm#multipleintelligences tests)

2. Fill this one in online (http://www.edutopia.org/multiple-intelligences-assessment)

Just be aware that these tests won’t be 100% and little things like your current mood and state (fatigue, stress, hunger etc.), or interpretation of the statement will alter the results daily.

#2 Question on how neuroplasticity works

“I was wondering if you could explain how neuroplasticity works”

Neuroplasticity or plasticity is about neural pathways and our ability to create new ones. Essentially, the idea that the brain was rigid and unable to change is untrue. Our brain is like plastic and can change and learn new things easily.

Information creates a neural pathway through the brain when it travels from one neuron to the next. When we learn new information, new pathways begin to form. The more we repeat the information, the stronger those pathways become, the less we repeat, the weaker they become and eventually ‘die’ - this is called synaptic pruning.

-Plasticity occurs throughout your life, but is more frequent during childhood.

-Information can be anything from learning to ride a bike/a language, to changing our mindset (mindfulness).

There’s loads of evidence to support it, for example:

1) People who have an area of expertise - London taxi drivers have to pass a knowledge test which requires them to learn 25,000 street names in a 6 mile radius, including the locations of tubes, hospitals etc.

2) People who recover from trauma injuries (Car accidents/stroke victims) are able to return to a fully functioning lifestyle after their trauma. The brain would rewire itself and rebuild neural pathways again (Learning how to walk again).

#1 Question about why people can be independent?

“What psychological research had been discovered about why people can be independent?”

Well, independence is a subjective term and I imagine it’s quite difficult to research. What I consider to be independent may not be the same for you, or different situations may encourage people to behave differently. Humans are also horrible at judging themselves.

From the top of my head, there’s been studies into ‘Locus of Control’ which is how much personal control you believe to have in a situation. You can either have internal (You take full responsibility/control for your behaviour and actions) or external (You don’t take responsibility and believe other people control actions or behaviour in your life, or that it was all luck).

or Erikson devised life stages in which we all progress through in our own time. During each stage we have to ‘resolve’ the current conflict. 

Eg; The adolescence stage deals with Identity Vs Confusion. Independence could form here as you could experience the complexity of life and would learn about different types of perception (sensory, logical and aesthetic).

Have a look on [scholar.google.co.uk] and search the term autonomy/autonomous as well.