Notes

-INTRO TO PSYCHOLOGY LECTURE #1-

Question: Why do you make the assumptions the way you do? Why do you see what you see, hear what you hear, and behave like you behave?

WHAT WE SEE

We base what we see on objects surrounding what we are judging. This affects certain properties of the object such as position, size, and color. This is because our sight has specific properties and laws, and when we trick those laws, our eyes come up with something completely different from what is actually in front of us.

WHAT WE HEAR

If we try to listen with our eyes, we will come up with something completely different from what we hear with our ears alone. And even when we listen with only our ears, what we hear when we combine the two senses is different yet again. Another process our brain contains is to connect what we are hearing to relative terms. An example of this is if a list is given of words such as candy, cake, and ice cream, your mind will probably the word sweet, even though the word was never mentioned. Your mind will categorize what you hear, and like in the example, will insert words that where never mentioned and place them in the group of words you did hear. This function is part of a cool thing called automaticity, which is better known as muscle memory. Once you through a ball enough times, it becomes natural and you don't really have to think about it. The same goes for words. When you read something, you are actually barely scanning the words and processing what your mind thinks would be in the allotted slot. This has many strengths along with it, but also some down sides. When your mind is processing what your eyes are seeing, it will make reading easier, quicker, and overall more efficient. However, if your mind is assuming things, it can miss simple things, like irregular word positions, or repetition of a word in a single sentence. It makes it easier to completely skip over little details in what you read. Going off of skipping over details, your mind also has something called limited focus. Everyone has heard it, but have never taken the time to find out what it is. Your mind can handle only so many topics. If you are looking for a certain thing in a page you will miss other details about the page, no matter how blatantly obvious they are. This also happens with eye sight. If you are told to look for something in a picture, your mind is absorbed with the task of doing so, and you will miss other details in it.