Albert Einstein once stated, “The only reason for time to exist is to prevent everything from happening at once.” The problem is that the perception of time can depend on age, emotions or health, psychologists say.
A long time ago it was noticed that with age, the passage of time for a person seems to accelerate. BBC employee and journalist Claudia Hammond agrees with this, and, according to her information, the same thing is observed when a person is in a relaxed state, but when an individual experiences, for example, fear, time “slows down” for him.
According to her research, in good company time passes, on average, twice as fast as in the company of boring and narrow-minded interlocutors. At the same time, while studying the experience of BBC journalist Alan Johnston, who was held hostage in the Gaza Strip for four months, Claudia discovered that time can stretch out significantly in emergency situations. Hammond says this can even be caused by loud screaming or crying: people usually think it sounds longer than it actually is.
There is not even a consensus regarding the passage of time - some of those interviewed by Claudia believe that they are moving in time, while others believe that time is moving for them. In addition, according to the journalist, the human brain does not have a special mechanism for calculating minute and hour periods of time; only short intervals of no more than three seconds are processed.
By the way, French researcher Michel Siffre conducted an experiment in 1962, living for two months in a cave to find out how a person perceives time in the absence of daylight, clocks and a certain daily routine. As a result, his individual days ranged from 6 to 40 hours, but on average they were approximately the same 24 hours.
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There are three main ways of perceiving the world: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. And each person will definitely have one dominant sense organ. A lot depends on how we perceive reality.
All people are divided into three large groups: visual, auditory and kinesthetic. If you ask several people to think about the sea, then one of them will first imagine the blue surface of the sea, the beach, the waves; another will associate the sea with the sound of the surf; and the third will remember the feeling of the burning sun and salty splashes on the skin.
Of course, every person is endowed with five basic senses: vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste. But there are three main ways of perceiving the world – visual, auditory and kinesthetic. And each person will definitely have one dominant sense organ. A lot depends on how we perceive reality.
Have you ever experienced that the other person just couldn't see the problem from your perspective? Have you ever experienced situations in which people around you seemed not to hear you? Have you ever felt upset because people close to you didn't feel your needs? The fact is that a huge percentage of human quarrels, disagreements, misunderstandings, contradictions and failures are associated precisely with the difference in worldview between different people. We are all, like the inhabitants of Babylon, speaking three different languages: visual, auditory, kinesthetic. And we raise our voices at each other, we get angry, irritated when others don’t understand us. However, stop suffering because of your characteristics and individual perception. It's time to use them to your advantage. And for this we need to find out who we are in terms of the way we perceive and how we can use this feature of ourselves. Well, then we will try to learn to speak with each person in his language.
For example, I am an auditory learner. Even at school, I could study textbooks until I was blue in the face and not remember a word of what I read, or I could listen to a teacher’s lecture once and remember everything said without making a single note. My mother is a kinesthetic learner. She can't understand or remember anything until she writes it down. The most important thing for her is feelings and sensations. What type are you?
Visual. Perceives everything that happens around him by eye
Around the world, approximately 60% of the population perceives everything that happens around them by eye. Their leading sense organ is vision. Visuals usually sit with a straight back and an elongated neck. Their gaze is often turned upward. They do not breathe very deeply, and their voice is often high-pitched and loud. They speak quickly, sometimes harshly. Visuals are organized and neat. They feel extremely uncomfortable when someone gets too close to them because they want to have a good view.
Visuals can be easily recognized by the following characteristic words and expressions:
"From my point of view"
"Without a shadow of a doubt"
“It’s right in front of my eyes.”
"I think"
"Present yourself in a favorable light"
“Describe the situation to me”
"Vague Idea"
"Beautiful words"
No, this does not mean that auditory or kinesthetic learners never use such expressions! It’s just that visual people use them all the time. They generally like to resort to visual characteristics for any reason, like: “Brilliant, peer, see, imagine, appearance, look, exhibit, spectacular, notice, depict, seem, flicker, foresee, reflect, attractive, ugly, etc.” .d." Sometimes, they start using their favorite “visual words” (or, as they are called in NLP, predicates) without any logic. So, for example, my young man, a typical visual person, often answers the question “how are you” with “Brilliant”, and when he is asked to characterize a particular situation, he can say something like: “ Beautiful story" or "Decent salary."
You are a visual person if:
When making important decisions, choose what looks best to you.
What influences you most during a discussion is being able to see the other person's pattern of reasoning.
It's easy to understand what's going on in your life by your appearance.
You are greatly influenced by certain colors.
You often judge the people around you by their appearance, although you have often heard the saying that people are met by their clothes.
You can easily remember a phone number if you see it written down in large numbers, and in general you have a photographic memory.
You have a good sense of location.
Audial. Perceives everything that happens around him by ear
People who perceive the world by ear make up approximately 20% of the total population of the globe. Audials breathe evenly and rhythmically. They love to talk, take pride in being able to express their own thoughts clearly, and tend to dominate the conversation. Although sometimes they are too verbose. They often accompany their words with expressive gestures, with their hands at face level.
Auditory learners often engage in conversations with themselves. Their gaze usually moves from side to side. Some people find these "shifty eyes" annoying. After all, in our culture, a person who looks away is usually considered a liar. But auditory people don’t make eye contact not because they are lying or hiding something. They are simply very sensitive to sounds, and their gaze may involuntarily twitch towards a dog barking in the neighboring yard or furniture rattling in the neighbors’ house.
Auditory learners typically use the following expressions:
"I want to be heard"
“It’s important for me to express myself”
"Detailed story"
"Give a report on what happened"
"I was speechless"
"Voice your opinion"
"In truth"
"Let's talk like men"
"Hold your tongue"
"Word for word"
Thus, auditory learners feel most comfortable pronouncing and hearing the following predicates: silent, chat, deaf, loud, melodic, assent, silence, resonance, noisy, ask, tell, listen, unheard, respond, etc.
Auditory learners perceive, process and remember information in their own way. When I took automotive courses, one of the most difficult exercises for me was the “slide.” I drove onto it twenty times in an old “Seven”, put the car on the handbrake, and then just couldn’t get going without rolling back. The instructor yelled at me with good obscenities: “I told you to look at the tachometer needle! - he yelled. - This is elementary! Just watch the speed! Let's do it again." And I gave again and again, but nothing worked. I had already come to terms with the idea that not everyone is cut out to be drivers, when our instructor fell ill. And for a while he was replaced by a very young, timid guy with much less driving experience, but with much more patience. The first thing he did was ask me to show how I perform a “slide,” to which I honestly admitted that I had no idea how this could be achieved.
“You see,” I said, “no matter how much I look at the tachometer, I still can’t understand when to release the handbrake and when to increase the gas.” And nothing comes of it.
The young instructor smiled:
– Believe it or not, I also don’t know how to do this tachometer exercise. That's why I do everything by ear. You just need to close your eyes and listen to the hum of the engine, when you hear that the car is starting to stall, then you need to quickly release the handbrake and add gas.
As soon as I tried to listen to the engine, I really caught the change in the sound of the engine the first time, and the exercise turned out easily and naturally, as if by itself.
This case can be called classic and very indicative. This is how knowing your dominant sense helps make your task easier.
You are an auditory learner if:
When making important decisions, choose what sounds best.
Your mood is most easily determined by the tone of your voice.
You love to explain things. You are not too lazy to repeat the same story several times with all the details.
You love listening to music. Your favorite song can change your mood a hundred and eighty degrees.
Do you prefer to listen to news on the radio? Enjoy buying audiobooks.
You can retell this or that conversation literally word for word.
Kinesthetic. Perceives everything that happens around by touch
In the world, approximately 20% of people are kinesthetic. That is, they perceive everything around by touch. These are people of feelings and sensations. They breathe deeply (usually from the stomach, not from the chest). Their voices are often low, deep, hoarse or muffled. They mostly speak slowly with good, expressive pauses. Kinesthetic learners love touch like no other. People usually don't like it when other people they don't know touch them or invade their personal space. But not for kinesthetic learners!
Once I arrived for a week-long training that was supposed to take place in large group. A very attractive guy has joined our team. While meeting the rest of the program participants, he managed to hug and kiss all the girls, regardless of their degree of attractiveness, and warmly shook hands with all the men. And this is typical behavior for a kinesthetic person. When I was sitting on the couch and he sat next to me, this guy moved as close as possible so that our legs were touching, even though there was plenty of space on the couch. And this was by no means flirting or an attempt to seduce me. This was his normal worldview. Such people, when communicating with someone, want to feel him. They will not recognize or understand a person until they touch him.
Kinesthetic learners constantly use expressions like:
"Get in touch"
"Out of my head"
"I feel"
"Hold on, hold back"
"Heated Argument"
"Change for the better"
"Catch something"
"Hand in hand"
"Keep calm"
"Inside out"
"Solid Foundation"
"Manage yourself"
As you probably already guessed, kinesthetic learners most often refer to the following feeling predicates: insensitive, fight, impressive, pressure, movement, tremble, hard, affectionate, soft, burdened, irritate, hurt, upset, calm, strength, firm, captivate , sensual, touch, etc. Kinesthetic people are capable of experiencing truly deep feelings; their attachments, as a rule, are strong and unshakable.
You are a kinesthetic learner if:
You make important decisions based on your feelings.
In a conversation, you easily feel the state of the other person.
You can choose comfortable furniture, such as a sofa or chair, with ease and pleasure. Unlike your friends, you only need to sit on it once to understand whether it will be comfortable to sit on such furniture for hours.
You love clothes made from natural fabrics that are pleasant to the touch. You will never buy even the most beautiful and stylish trousers, if you are uncomfortable with the way they fit on you.
To remember something, you need to write it down. For example, before an exam, you specifically write cheat sheets for yourself, although in practice you don’t use them, because there is no need for this: everything that you wrote down by hand, you already remember.
Based on materials from the book by Eva Berger “NLP for every day. 20 rules of a winner"
Figure and background. As psychologists say, everything that a person perceives, he perceives as a figure against a background. A figure is something that is clearly, distinctly realized, that a person describes, communicating what he perceives (sees, hears, etc.). But at the same time, any figure is necessarily perceived against some background. The background is something indistinct, amorphous, unstructured. For example, we will hear our name even in a noisy company - it usually immediately stands out as a figure in the sound background. Psychology calls, however, not to limit yourself to everyday examples and to test your statements in experiments.
Upon visual presentation, as has been established, a surface with clear boundaries and a smaller area acquires the status of a figure. A figure combines such image elements that are similar in size, shape, have symmetry, move in the same direction, are located closest to each other, etc. Consciousness perceives a figure by grouping image elements according to the proximity factor. The dashes in Figure 18 are perceived as grouped in columns of two, and not just as dashes on a white background.
Rice. 18. Grouping by proximity factor
If the subject is given to the left and right ears different messages and ask to repeat one of them out loud, then the subject can easily cope with this task. But at this time he is not aware of another message, does not remember it, cannot say what was discussed there, or even what language it was spoken in. IN best case scenario he can tell whether there was music or speech, whether the voice was female or male. Psychologists call the unique message in such an experiment shaded; it seems to be in the shadows, in the background. Nevertheless, the subject somehow reacts to this message. For example, he is immediately aware of the appearance of his name in it. Here is one experiment confirming the perception of a shaded message. The repeated message contains sentences containing homonym words, for example: “He found the KEY in the clearing,” and the shaded message includes the word “WATER” for some subjects, and “DOOR” for other subjects. Subjects are then asked, from many sentences presented to them, to recognize the ones they repeated. Among the sentences presented are the following: “He found a spring in a clearing” and “He found a master key in a clearing.” It turned out that the first subjects confidently recognized the sentence about a spring, and the second subjects just as confidently recognized the sentence about a master key. And, of course, the subjects of both groups could not reproduce anything from the shaded message, that is, they did not remember anything about it.
The relativity of the status of figure and ground can be illustrated by the example of ambiguous drawings (they are also called dual images). In these drawings, the figure and the background can change places; something that, with a different understanding of the drawing, is understood as the background can be perceived as a figure. Turning a figure into a background and vice versa is called restructuring. Thus, in the famous drawing by the Danish psychologist E. Rubin (see Fig. 19) you can see either two black profiles on a white background, or a white vase on a black background. Note: if a person is aware of both images in such an ambiguous drawing, then, looking at the drawing, he will never be able to see both images at the same time, and if he tries to see only one of the two images (for example, a vase), then after some time time will inevitably see something different (profiles).
Rice. 19. Ruby figure: two black profiles on a white background or a white vase on a black background
As paradoxical as it may sound, when realizing what is perceived, a person always simultaneously realizes that he has perceived more than he is currently aware of. The laws of perception are experimentally established principles, according to which a conscious figure is distinguished from the multitude of stimuli received by the brain.
A figure is usually something that has some meaning for a person, something that is connected with past experiences, assumptions and expectations of the perceiving person, with his intentions and desires. This has been shown in many experimental studies, but concrete results significantly changed the view of nature and the process of perception.
The law of the aftereffect of figure and ground. Constancy of perception. A person prefers to perceive (realize) what he has already seen before. This is manifested in a series of laws. The law of the aftereffect of figure and ground states: what a person once perceived as a figure tends to have an aftereffect, that is, to be re-emerged as a figure; what was once perceived as background tends to continue to be perceived as background. Let us consider some experiments demonstrating the manifestation of this law.
The subjects were presented with meaningless black and white images. (Such images are easy for anyone to make: on a small piece of white paper you just need to draw some meaningless stripes with black ink so that the ratio of the volumes of black and white on the piece of paper was approximately the same.) In most cases, the subjects perceived the white field as a figure, and the black field as the background, i.e., they saw the image as white on black. However, with some effort, they could perceive the presented image as black figure on a white background. In the preliminary (“training”) series of the experiment, subjects were presented with several hundred such images, each for approximately 4 s. At the same time, they were told what color image (white or black) they should see as a figure. The subjects tried “with all their might” to see exactly the image as a figure that the experimenter pointed at. In the “testing” series of the experiment, carried out several days later, they were presented with both new drawings and images from the previous series, and they had to, without any effort, perceive what was presented as it is perceived by itself, and report which field - white or black – seen as a figure. It turned out that subjects tend to perceive old images in the same way as they did in the training series (although basically they did not even recognize these images), that is, to re-emphasize the same figure and not to highlight the same background.
We present the subject a set of stimuli for a split second (this can be images or words, sounds or instrument readings, etc.). Its task is to recognize the presented stimuli. He recognizes some of them unmistakably. In some he makes mistakes, i.e. he selects an incorrect (from the point of view of the instructions) figure. It turns out that when stimuli in which he had previously made a mistake are repeatedly presented, the subject makes mistakes again more often than by chance. Usually he repeats the same mistakes that he made earlier (“the figure has an aftereffect”), sometimes he makes different mistakes in a row (“the background has an aftereffect”). The phenomenon of repetition of perceptual errors found in different experiments is particularly unexpected. Indeed, in order to repeat a mistake when presenting the same stimulus, the subject must first recognize that the presented stimulus is the same, remember that in response to its presentation he has already made such and such a mistake, i.e., essentially correctly recognize and then repeat the mistake.
In some ambiguous images, a person cannot see the second image, even despite direct prompting from the experimenter. But then the subjects draw a picture that includes this image, or describe in detail what they saw, or express associations that arise in connection with the picture.
In all such cases, the subjects’ responses usually contain elements associated with the meaning of the picture that they are not aware of. This manifestation of the unconscious background appears when the task or object of perception changes.
The law of constancy of perception also speaks about the influence of past experience on perception: a person views the familiar objects around him as unchanging. We move away from objects or approach them - they do not change in size in our perception. (True, if objects are far enough away, they still seem small, for example, when we look at them from an airplane window.) The mother’s face, changing depending on lighting conditions, distance, cosmetics, hats, etc., is recognizable a child as something unchangeable already in the second month of life. White paper we perceive it as white even under moonlight, although it reflects about the same amount of light as black coal in the sun. When we look at a bicycle wheel at an angle, our eye actually sees an ellipse, but we perceive this wheel as round. In people's minds, the world as a whole is more stable and stable than, apparently, it actually is.
Constancy of perception is largely a manifestation of the influence of past experience. We know that the wheels are round and the paper is white, and that's why we see them that way. When there is no knowledge about the real shapes, sizes and colors of objects, then the phenomenon of constancy does not appear. One ethnographer describes: once in Africa, he and a local resident, a pygmy, came out of the forest. Cows were grazing in the distance. The pygmy had never seen cows from afar before, and therefore, to the amazement of the ethnographer, he mistook them for ants - the constancy of perception was broken.
Influence on the perception of expectations and assumptions. Another principle of perception: a person perceives the world depending on what he expects to perceive. The process of identifying a figure is influenced by people's assumptions about what might be presented to them. Much more often than we ourselves imagine, we see what we expect to see, we hear what we expect to hear, etc. If you ask a person with his eyes closed to determine by touch what object was given to him, then the real metallic hardness of the presented object will be felt as the softness of rubber as long as the subject is convinced that the object given to him is a rubber toy. If you present an image that can equally well be understood as the number 13 or the letter B, then subjects without any doubt perceive this sign as 13 if it appears in a series of numbers, and as the letter B if it appears in a series of letters .
A person easily fills in the gaps in incoming information and isolates a message from the noise if he assumes or knows in advance what will be presented to him. Errors that arise in perception are very often caused by disappointed expectations. We present the subject with an image of a face without eyes for a split second - as a rule, he will see a face with eyes and will confidently prove that there really were eyes in the image. We clearly hear an unintelligible word in noise if it is clear from the context. In the experiment, subjects were shown slides that were so out of focus that actual image recognition was impossible. Each subsequent presentation slightly improved focusing. It turned out that subjects who, at the first presentations, put forward erroneous hypotheses about what was shown to them, could not correctly identify the image, even with such image quality, when no one makes mistakes at all. If two circles with different diameters are shown on the screen 4–5 times in a row, each time on the left with a diameter of, for example, 22 mm, and on the right with a diameter of 28 mm, and then present two equal circles with a diameter of 25 mm, then the overwhelming Most subjects already involuntarily expect to see unequal circles, and therefore do not see (do not recognize) them as equal. (This effect will manifest itself even more clearly if a person with his eyes closed is first placed in the left and right hand balls of different volume or weight, and then put equal balls.)
Georgian psychologist Z. I. Khojava presented subjects who knew German and Russian with a list of German words. At the end of this list there was a word that could be read either as a meaningless letter combination written in Latin letters, or as a meaningful word written in Cyrillic. All subjects continued to read this letter combination in German (i.e., they classified it as meaningless, but German words), without noticing at all a meaningful variant of its reading as a Russian word. American J. Bagby showed children slides through a stereoscope so that different eyes saw different images. Subjects (Mexicans and Americans) looked at two images at once, one typical of American culture (a baseball game, a blonde girl, etc.), and the other typical of Mexican culture (a bullfight, a black-haired girl, etc.). ). The corresponding photographs were similar in shape, contour of the main masses, structure and distribution of light and shadows. Although some subjects noticed that they were presented with two pictures, most saw only one - the one that was more typical of their experience.
So, a person perceives information depending on his expectations. But if his expectations were not met, then he tries to find some kind of explanation for this, and therefore his consciousness pays the greatest attention to the new and unexpected. A sharp, unexpected sound causes the head to turn in the direction of the sound, even in newly born babies. Preschool children take longer to look at new images rather than those they were previously introduced to, or choose new toys to play with rather than those that were shown to them in advance. All people have a longer reaction time to rare and unexpected signals than to frequent and expected ones, and the time to recognize unexpected signals is also longer. Consciousness, in other words, works longer on rare and unexpected signals. New and varied environments generally increase mental stress.
Immutable information is not retained in consciousness, so a person is not able to perceive and comprehend unchanging information for a long time. Unchanged information quickly becomes expected and, even against the wishes of the subjects, escapes from their consciousness. A stabilized image that does not change in brightness and color (for example, with the help of contact lenses to which a light source is attached, thus moving along with the eyes), with all the efforts of the subject, ceases to be recognized within 1–3 s after the start of presentation. A constant irritant of moderate intensity, affecting the ear (constant or strictly periodic noise) or the skin (clothing, wrist watch), very soon ceases to be noticed. When fixed for a long time, the color background loses its color and begins to look gray. Close attention to any unchanging or evenly swaying object disrupts the normal flow of consciousness and contributes to the emergence of so-called altered states - meditative and hypnotic. There is a special technique of hypnotization by fixing a point on the ceiling or wall, as well as fixing the gaze on an object located at a distance of approximately 25 cm from the subject’s eyes.
Repeated repetition of the same word or group of words leads to a subjective feeling of loss of meaning of these words. Say a word out loud many times - sometimes even a dozen repetitions are enough to create a specific feeling of losing the meaning of this word. Many mystical techniques are based on this technique: shamanic rituals, repetition of verbal formulas (“Lord, have mercy on me a sinner” in Orthodoxy, “la ilaha il-la-l-lahu” (i.e. “there is no god but Allah”) in Islam), etc. Repeated recitation of such phrases leads not only to the loss of their meaning, but also, as Eastern mystics say, to a complete “emptying of consciousness,” which contributes to the emergence of special mystical states. The continuous talking of the doctor, repeating the same formulas, contributes to hypnotic suggestion. The monotonous architectural environment has a soporific effect on people.
Automated activities (walking, reading, playing musical instruments, swimming, etc.) due to their monotony, are also not perceived by the person performing this action and are not retained in consciousness. A number of complex tasks that require the greatest precision and muscular coordination (ballet dancing, boxing, marksmanship, fast typing) are successfully performed only when they are brought to the point of automatism and therefore are practically not perceived by consciousness. A “mental satiation effect” was discovered: the subject is unable to perform a monotonous task without variations for even a short time and is forced to change – sometimes unnoticed by himself – the task he is solving.
With a paucity of external influences, a person develops phenomena similar to fatigue: erroneous actions increase, emotional tone decreases, drowsiness develops, etc. In 1956, perhaps the most famous experiment with a long-term absence of information (sensory isolation) was conducted: 20 dollars a day (which at that time was a very significant amount) volunteer subjects lay on a bed, their hands were inserted into special cardboard tubes so that there was as little tactile stimuli as possible, they were wearing special glasses that let in only diffuse light, auditory the stimuli were masked by the incessant noise of the air conditioner running. The subjects were fed and watered, they could do their toileting as needed, but the rest of the time they were as motionless as possible. The hopes of the subjects that they would have a good rest in such conditions were not justified. The participants in the experiment could not concentrate on anything - thoughts eluded them. More than 80% of the subjects became victims of visual hallucinations: the walls shook, the floor rotated, the body and consciousness split into two, the eyes became unbearably painful from bright light, etc. None of them lasted more than six days, and the majority demanded to stop the experiment after three day.
The role of meaningfulness in identifying a figure. A special role in identifying a figure is played by its meaningfulness for the perceiving person. A doctor examining an x-ray, a chess player studying a new position in an opening, a hunter recognizing birds by their flight from incredible heights. ordinary person distances - all of them do not react at all to meaningless pictures and see in them completely differently than people who do not know how to read an x-ray, play chess or hunt. Pointless situations are difficult and painful for all people. Man tries to give meaning to everything. In general, we usually perceive only what we understand. If a person suddenly hears walls talking, then in most cases he will not believe that walls can really talk, and will look for some reasonable explanation for this: the presence of a hidden person, a tape recorder, etc., or even decide that I lost my mind myself.
Meaningful words are recognized significantly faster and more accurately than meaningless sets of letters when they are visually presented. In an experiment with a shaded message, when different texts are sent to different ears, it turned out that from two messages the person himself always chooses the one that has some kind of understandable meaning for him, and, as already mentioned, he practically does not notice the message for which he no need to follow. But the most unexpected thing: if a meaningful message is sent to one ear or the other, then the subject, despite all his efforts to strictly monitor the message sent to one specific ear, is forced turns his attention to a meaningful message, no matter what ear it comes to. This effect can be partially demonstrated when visual information is presented. Please read the following text, paying attention only to the words in bold:
parallelepiped eyes racer perceive cruise surrounding information upside down horseman. However we again and again see the world stupidity in normal table orientation gardener. If you wear automobile glasses, helicopter turning over falling jack image, mollusk then after boots long-term WORKOUT Please HUMAN astronomy CAPABLE deep sea AGAIN deftly SEE THE WORLD sail SO Friday HOW DO WE HAVE IT Thursday USED TO curdled milk USUALLY root SEE.
When switching meaningful text from one font to another, as a rule, there is a feeling of failure, and sometimes an attempt to read text written in a different font.
Making sense of the world has a lot to do with the use of language. Therefore, our perception of the world changes depending on what words we use to call what we see. People who speak different languages perceive the world slightly differently, because different languages themselves describe this world slightly differently. It is no coincidence that Russian artists paint spring in the form of a charming girl (the word “spring” in Russian female), and German artists - in the form of a handsome young man (in accordance with the gender of the word “spring” in German). Russian-speaking subjects, for example, are more likely to separate blue and cyan in their perception than English-speaking subjects, who use the same word “blue” to denote these two colors.
Perception as a process of testing hypotheses. A huge number of errors that we make in perception are not due to the fact that we see or hear something incorrectly - our senses work almost perfectly, but because we misunderstand it. However, it is precisely thanks to our ability to comprehend what we perceive that we make discoveries and perceive much more than what is perceived by our senses. Past experience and predicting the future expand the information received by our senses. We use this information to test hypotheses about what is in front of us. Perception – it is an active process of obtaining information to test hypotheses about the world around us.
No wonder that perception is closely related to movement and action. Obviously, movement is necessary to obtain the necessary information. Any object must be in the field of view to be seen; you need to pick it up to feel it, etc. Although the mechanisms that control such movements are very complex, we will not consider them here. However, the role of movement in perception is not only (and not even so much) this. First of all, let us note the micromovements of the sense organs. They help retain constant stimuli in consciousness, which, as we remember, tend to quickly disappear from consciousness. In a person, the points of skin sensitivity are constantly shifting: tremor of the fingers, hands, torso, which does not allow the stabilization of muscle sensations: involuntary micro-movements of the eye do not make it possible to keep the gaze on a given point, etc. All this contributes to such a change in external stimulation so that what is perceived is preserved in consciousness, but at the same time the constancy of perceived objects was not violated.
Rice. 20. The illusion of the size of a visible object: Ames’s room plan
However, the main role of action in perception is to test emerging hypotheses. Let's consider a corresponding example. The American psychologist A. Ames designed a special room (it is called the “Ames room”), the far wall of which is not located at a right angle to the side walls, as is usually the case, but at a very acute angle to one wall and, accordingly, at an obtuse angle to the other ( see fig. 20). Thanks to the false perspective created, among other things, by the patterns on the walls, the observer sitting at the viewing device perceived this room as rectangular. If you place an object or a stranger in the far (oblique) sharp corner of such a room, they seem sharply reduced in size. This illusion persists even if the observer is informed of the true shape of the room. However, as soon as the observer performs some action in this room (touch the wall with a stick, throw a ball at the opposite wall), the illusion disappears - the room begins to be seen in accordance with its real shape. (The role of past experience is indicated by the fact that the illusion does not arise at all if the observer sees a person well known to him, for example, a husband or wife, son, etc.) So, the person forms a hypothesis about what he perceives (for example, sees or hears), and with the help of his actions verifies the validity of this hypothesis. Our actions correct our hypotheses, and with them our perceptions.
Research shows that the inability to make movements prevents us from learning to perceive the world. However, such experiments that destroy the process of perception, of course, were not carried out on children. Convenient subjects for experimenters were kittens and baby monkeys. Here is a description of one such experiment. Newborn kittens spent most of their time in the dark, where they could move freely. In the light, they were placed in special baskets that rotated like a carousel. The kitten, whose basket had holes for its paws, and which could thereby rotate the carousel, subsequently had no visual defects. The kitten, who sat passively in the basket and could not make any movements in it, subsequently made serious errors in distinguishing the shape of objects.
In this section we paid main attention to the activity of perception as a mental process. A number of important but specific issues (for example, the perception of time, movement, depth, speech, color, etc.) remained outside the scope of our consideration. Those wishing to become more familiar with the psychology of perception should refer to specialized literature.
HOW A PERSON REMEMBERS
A person is not able to retain in his consciousness even a small set of signs. He is usually able to reproduce without error after one presentation of just no more than seven numbers, letters, syllables, words, names of objects, etc. Not everyone can immediately remember even a seven-digit phone number. Why is the result of our attempts to remember something the first time so disastrous? In fact, the answer to this question has already been given: consciousness, as shown in the previous paragraph, is not capable of retaining constant information. This means that a person usually forgets information that needs to be retained unchanged in consciousness. Therefore, paradoxically, in order to retain information in consciousness, it is necessary to change it all the time.
The brain automatically remembers any information. If this information does not change, it just as automatically leaves consciousness. Therefore, when something is retained in consciousness, then, generally speaking, it occurs in violation of the normal mental process. Human activity to counteract this normal process of departure from consciousness of unchanged information includes attempts, sometimes painful, to retain information in consciousness by changing it and specific actions of the subject aimed at returning signs that have left him to consciousness.
Mnemonics. There are various mnemonic devices, which contribute to better memorization of information and allow you to increase the amount of information memorized from the first presentation. They are aimed at encouraging the subject to artificially change the stimulus material, but in such a way that these changes nevertheless do not lead to reproduction errors. Let's look at some of these techniques.
Creating images when memorizing words. When the first pair of words is presented, a visual image is created - an imaginary situation that includes both of these words. When presented with the pair of words “puppy, bicycle,” you can imagine, for example, a cheerful puppy riding a bicycle and vigorously pedaling. Let the next word be “cigar” - now in an imaginary picture the puppy is pedaling with a cigar in his teeth. A new word “geography” is introduced: a geography textbook with a world map on the cover appears on the trunk of a bicycle. “Computer” - the entire imaginary picture is placed on the display screen. “Snow Maiden” - the puppy immediately acquires a long braid and a silver fur coat of a New Year's character - etc. This method allows you to significantly increase the number of memorized words. Please note: creating images does not reduce, but increases the amount of material to be memorized. For example, the constructed image of a puppy riding a bicycle can be equally successfully applied to different pairs of words: “puppy - wheel”, “dog - bicycle”, “paw - pedal”, etc. Therefore, the subject must still remember not only the imaginary picture he created, but also the words themselves presented to him.
Mental placement of objects presented for memorization in space. Let's say you're sitting in a classroom and need to memorize a list of words. Try to place objects denoted by these words in the audience space. Important note: place them in the most unexpected places and so that during playback, looking around the audience, you could notice them (for example, it is better not to put anything in the desk). So, let the word “beefsteak” be presented to you. Where do we put it? For example, we hang it from a light bulb to keep it warm. The next word is “book”. Let's put it on top of the open door - let it fall on the one who opens the door. “Crocodile” - oh, we will have a crocodile lying on the windowsill. We’ll put the “airplane” in the corner. In another corner we will put a “cactus”, and in the middle between them we will place a “flute”, etc. Again, we will note an increase in the volume of memorization when mentally placing stimulus material in space - now you need to remember not only the stimulus material itself, but also where it is posted.
(By the way, try to remember, without re-reading, all 12 words mentioned as presented words for memorization when describing techniques for creating images and placing objects in space. Did you manage to remember at least 10?)
Recoding. The easiest way to use this technique is to memorize a large number of binary digits. If you can quickly convert binary digits (0 and 1) to octal, then memorizing 7-8 octal digits will lead to memorizing more than two dozen binary digits. When memorizing a series of decimal numbers, they can be interpreted as dates, telephone or apartment numbers known to you. For example, you need to remember the series of numbers 4125073698. Let's recode this series, say, like this: 41 – year the war began; 25 December - Catholic Christmas, A 07 January – Orthodox; 369 is 123 multiplied by 3, and at the end 8 - two cubed.
Such recoding can be carried out when memorizing a set of words. Surely the reader still remembers the mnemonic rule for remembering the seven colors of the rainbow: Every Hunter Wants to Know Where the Pheasant Sits. There are similar designs for memorizing the seven notes of a musical scale. A similar technique can be used when memorizing formulas. Let, for example, you need to remember the formula:
Let's replace the letters with words, for example, like this: strangled Alas! Leading... Don't like the gloominess of this design or the lack of a minus in it? Another option please: Your thoughtfulness, dear, is amazing... Are there missing integrals in the verbal description? No problem. Add words like: interesting, intelligent. Remember the formula? Just in case: double the increase by blowing. Now you won’t be able to forget her for a long time...
Among mnemonic techniques, one stands out, which almost all people intuitively use, not only in experimental conditions, but also in everyday life. It's about repetition. Repetition is the translation of the material presented for memorization into the memorizer’s own speech, i.e., a change in the material, but one that certainly does not interfere with reproduction. Repetition contributes to better recall, but still it is not the most effective method of memorization, since repeated repetition itself, as already noted, contributes to the text slipping from consciousness.
Phenomenal memory. Psychology has described many cases where people had so-called phenomenal memory - the ability to reproduce a huge (perhaps unlimited) amount of information. Phenomenal memory is found not only in mentally retarded people (although, let me remind you, this phenomenon is most typical for them), but also in many famous personalities in history. There are legends about the unique capabilities of the memory of Julius Caesar and Napoleon, Mozart and Gauss, the chess player Alekhine and the adventurer Count Saint-Germain. One of the most striking and studied examples is the mnemonist S. D. Shereshevsky, a book about whom was written by the famous Russian psychologist A. R. Luria. Psychologists did not find any restrictions in Shereshevsky either on the volume of memorization or on the time of storing information. For example, Shereshevsky, from the first presentation, memorized a long stanza of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” in an unfamiliar Italian language, which he easily repeated during an unexpected check... 15 years later. It is not surprising that Shereshevsky was concerned with the question not of how best to remember, but how to learn to forget.
Some of the people who had phenomenal memory used mnemonic techniques when remembering. Shereshevsky, for example, demonstrating his amazing abilities in the circus, resorted to the technique placement in space along a familiar Moscow street. (It is curious that he once made a mistake: he put the object named to him in the shadow and when reproducing it, mentally walking along this street again, he did not notice it.) But usually with phenomenal preservation no work of consciousness is performed on the material to be memorized. Scottish mathematician A. Etkin in 1933 read a list of 25 unrelated words twice and... reproduced it without errors 27 years later! The famous musicologist I. I. Sollertinsky could leaf through a book and then accurately reproduce the text of any page of this book. Sollertinsky did not even read the book whose pages of text he reproduced. It is clear that such preservation cannot be explained by any mnemonic devices. In general, people with phenomenal memory, as a rule, do not carry out any transformations of information. When, at one of his public speeches, Shereshevsky was asked to remember a series of numbers: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, etc. up to 57, he did it without even noticing the simple sequence of numbers. “If they had given me just the alphabet, I would not have noticed it and would have honestly started memorizing it,” admitted Shereshevsky.
With phenomenal memory, signs are reproduced without visible effort - with the same ease with which we, looking at a house or a tree, without any conscious effort, recognize that it is a house or a tree. The problem is that none of us knows how to consciously imprint the information we are learning into our memory. We know how to remember, but we don’t know how we can do it. Nevertheless, each of us constantly monitors the process of memorization with our consciousness: what if I make a mistake? What if I forget something important? It seems that people with phenomenal memory are distinguished primarily by the fact that they are capable, like children, of not putting the process of storing and retrieving from memory under the control of consciousness.
Figure and ground during retrieval from memory. The hero of the famous story by A.P. Chekhov remembered the “horse” surname for a long time, until he remembered - Ovsov. But at the same time, he remembered that other options (Kobylin, Zherebtsov, Loshadinin, Bulanov, etc.) were not suitable. As always, Chekhov is precise in his observation. We all know that one forgotten word or the forgotten surname of one of our acquaintances is experienced differently than another forgotten word or the forgotten surname of another acquaintance. We often remember more than we can remember. What we consciously retrieve from memory (figure) is always accompanied by something else that we are not clearly aware of (background).
Try to remember a list of 10 words from one reading and then, without looking at the text, write down on a piece of paper all the words you remember in any order:
chicken hair act news nipple bump prison jam keychain gate
Don't be surprised that you remember seven or a little more words (from five to nine) - this is usually what happens. But it is unlikely (although possible) that you were able to write down all ten words. Are you unsuccessful in your attempts to remember the remaining ones? Do you feel like you remember more?
Then read a list of 20 words, which includes 10 words you already know and 10 new ones. Add to what you have already managed to reproduce those words that you recognized in this list as words from the previous list. In the vast majority of cases, at least one word can be attributed to everyone! Let's hope you succeed too. Here's a list to check out:
prison hoof jug gate shoe pigeon nipple stupid pear jam pipe cone chicken keychain ram ambush news hair sailor deed
So, most subjects manage to recognize previously unreproduced words from the first list. This means that they remembered them even when they could not reproduce them! It is precisely what we remember, but do not reproduce, that acts in our consciousness as a background to what we manage to reproduce.
The famous memory researcher G. Ebbinghaus created a unique method for measuring the volume of what is somehow given to consciousness, but which nevertheless is not reproduced - the method of saving. As is known, a long series of characters (numbers, letters, syllables, words, etc.), far exceeding the limit of seven characters, can be memorized by the test subject only after several repetitions. However, after a long time after memorization, the subject is usually unable to reproduce any of the elements of the previously memorized series. No wonder, we say, he completely forgot it. But is it? Ebbinghaus asks subjects to memorize the same series again. And it turns out that re-learning an allegedly forgotten series often requires a significantly smaller number of presentations than if this series had not been previously learned. Even if a person is sure that he does not remember anything, in fact, he may well still store something (“save”, in Ebbinghaus’s terminology) in his memory. Even when our consciousness forgets, it actually remembers something that was forgotten, remembers what it doesn’t seem to remember.
Here is an example of one study using the savings method. The child, who was only five months old at the start of the experiment, had three passages of ancient Greek read aloud every day for three months. Every next three months three new passages were read to him. This continued until the baby’s third birthday. Later he never learned ancient Greek. At the ages of 8, 14, and 18, he was again presented each time with a different part of these passages to learn by heart, along with new texts he had never heard before. At 8 years old he learned old texts 30% faster than new ones, at 14 years old - 8%, although at 18 years old the differences were no longer noticeable.
When studying the process of memorization, one can also detect figure-ground aftereffects. Ebbinghaus himself established the law that now bears his name: the number of repeated presentations required to learn the entire series grows much faster than the volume of the presented series. For example: for one presentation, the subject correctly reproduces 6-7 nonsense syllables, but to reproduce 12 syllables he will need 16 presentations, and for 24 syllables - 44 presentations; If a subject remembers 8 digits from one presentation, then to memorize 9 digits he already needs 3–4 presentations. In this case (the aftereffect of the figure), during subsequent presentations, first of all those signs are reproduced that were already reproduced during the previous presentation. But this also means that previously unreproduced signs continue to persistently not be reproduced upon subsequent presentations (background aftereffect). Thus, Ebbinghaus's law is a consequence of both the aftereffect of the figure and the aftereffect of the background.
Let the person reproduce after one presentation a series of 10–14 characters. He will reproduce some signs of this series correctly, but he will miss some and “will not remember.” After this, he is presented with the next row, containing both new signs and signs from the previous row (correctly reproduced and omitted). It turns out that figure-ground aftereffects are also observed in this case. A person will remember first of all those signs that he has just correctly reproduced (the probability of reproducing these signs is greater than the probability of reproducing new signs). He will remember worst of all those signs that he just forgot when presented with the previous series (the probability of reproducing previously missed characters is less than the probability of reproducing new characters). The replacement error is also repeated, when instead of one sign another is consistently reproduced. All this looks incredible: after all, in order to repeat the mistake of omission, one must be able to recognize previously missed signs. In other words, in order not to reproduce some signs again, they must be remembered! But the most amazing thing: if the subject did not reproduce one of the signs, and this sign is in the next row was not presented to him, then the subject will more often than not mistakenly reproduce this previously missed sign. Similarly: a forgotten “horse name” comes into our consciousness not when we are intensely remembering it, but at the moment when we are not thinking about it at all.
The process of retrieval from memory is very similar to the process of perception. Of the huge amount of data stored in the brain, when remembering, it is necessary to realize only a small part of this data - the figure, retaining the rest of the information as a poorly distinguishable background. It is not surprising that the main factors influencing the perception of a figure also influence its retrieval from memory.
Let's consider an example when a foreign language teacher sets a task for students. New words are taught during the lesson, everyone first reads them independently, then they try to translate them together without using dictionaries. Then the materials are closed and the teacher asks each student to provide a translation of one or two words just discussed from Russian into English.
The process is clear. Let's think about how effectively students can solve this problem.
It is known that all people are divided into three categories: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Based on this, we can subdivide the types of information perception.
How a person perceives the world around him determines his interaction with it. In fact, the language in which you need to communicate with a person depends on the type of perception of the world.
Let's look at the key specifics of each type.
Audial
Perceives information by ear and does not remember written language well. Likes to talk because... for people of this type, this is a priority communication channel. The discussion is dominated. They love listening to audio books.
Visual
Perception through vision. I read it and remembered it. Drew it on the board, good, discussed it by ear poorly. They have good visual memory. Audio books are not accepted.
Kinesthetic
Feeling the world through touch and touch.
A person must write down information in order to remember it.
Now let's look at what type of person the foreign language teacher's exercise is most aimed at.
Two answers immediately arise: visual and auditory. Visual, because all the words were viewed visually. And this is a fact, the percentage of memorization for such people is high, about 60%.
Auditory, because all words must be spoken. However, for an auditory learner it is important to say these words yourself in order to remember them better. If in a lesson everyone is asked to pronounce one word, then the auditory learner may not recognize the pronunciation of other colleagues. That is why this task for auditory learners will be completed by 20-30 percent.
For a kinesthetic learner, everything is clear; he didn’t write down the words, which means he didn’t remember.
This is why auditory learners perceive information well during lectures.
Kinesthetic learners will be able to remember something if they take notes on the material, and visual learners will be able to remember something if the lecture is accompanied by illustrations on the board.
Another example from life. In a certain company you need to come up with a slogan, the manager writes a letter to the whole team with the following content: whoever comes up with the slogan will receive a bonus. Who do you think will start generating ideas faster and more in writing, and who will refrain from writing?
In my practice I had to work with different types people, but clearly did not stand out for the types considered in this note. However, once I had to work with a person who did not perceive any information by ear at all. It was almost impossible to get feedback in a conversation, because... the man did not understand what they wanted from him. However, as soon as you switched to corporate Jabber and started correspondence, everything fell into place.
Accept information, keep in mind the difference in the perception of information by different types of people.
