My Perception Almost Gave Me a Heart Attack

As I walked from the hallway into the living room to get my charger I saw, in my peripheral vision, a person sitting on the couch. Normally this wouldn’t frighten me since I do have a family of 4 but I was supposed to be home alone! I stopped in my tracks and when I turned to  my left to get a good look at this intruder, I realized it was a Nike workout bag that I had placed on the armrest of the couch earlier that had stayed “standing” up vertically. Needless to say, I was relieved! After I relaxed and my heart stopped pounding out of my chest and having read the chapter on perception from our book already, I thought to myself, “What happened in my mind that made me think it was a person even though I knew I was the only one home?”

One thing that affected my thought process for sure was my brains recognition of my environment and the regularities often seen within it. My brain and I are used to seeing people sit on couches in my home, its the norm. Because I had done something irregular (placed the bag on the arm chair instead of the closet), my brain automatically assumed it was a human form due to top-down processing. My previous knowledge of my environment affected my brains reasoning and result.

The size and distance of the bag also played an important role. It was not a large bag nor an extremely small one such as a clutch or wallet, so being that it was of average size and the bag was near me and on top of the arm of the couch rather than on the seat cushion, I perceived the bag as being similar to the human’s torso and head size.

Once my fear forced me to turn and confront the “intruder” and see who it was, my bottom-up processing came into play. Instead of my brain getting the information from the “blob” seen in my peripheral vision, I now focused clearly on the object and my brain was able to process that it was not a human but indeed a bag. Certain neurons were “fired” when the rods and cones in my eyes were able to distinguish the bag’s parts and categorize the “geons” (Goldstein) into the area of my mind that said “It’s a bag!”

Of course I felt silly after my brain helped me realize that I was scared of what turned out to be a bag but, if  not for the chapters I have read already, I do not think I would have taken into account all the different processes and steps that it takes to do, what I believe, is the simple task of seeing and interpreting. Everything our mind can do at one time is astonishing and I learned I take my mind and body for granted very much. Just waking up and getting dressed is an amazing feat in itself and it is amazing what our mind can do every second of every day of our lives.

Goldstein, E B. Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience. Australia: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2011. Print.

 

3 thoughts on “My Perception Almost Gave Me a Heart Attack

  1. Breanna Michelle Meade

    Your post grabbed my attention immediately because I have done this same thing far too many times, although I usually let it ride out for much longer than you did and try to convince my husband that there was a ghost inside the house. Once I perceive something is there, my imagination runs wild. Obviously I have watched way too many episodes of “Ghost Hunters” for my own good.
    That being said, it is the strangest form of top-down processing because I am taking experiences from other people, that I have watched on television, and turning them into my own. For example, I saw an episode where a woman claimed that she saw a man’s ghostly shadow go across her basement wall and he attacked her later on, and so on. Coincidentally I see “shadows of ghostly men” out of the corner of my eye soon after and am convinced the house is haunted.
    I am glad to know that you are not as crazy as me and enjoyed your post. I will work to be influenced by your post in the future of my “ghostly encounters” and try to remain calm, while using cognitive psychology techniques to analyze my thought processes from my strange perceptions.

  2. Laura J Eisenhower

    I’m sure we can all relate to this phenomenon, and until you mentioned it in your post, I usually just chalked it up to my eyes playing tricks on me, or momentary hallucinations, without attributing it to brain trying to recognize a common object as something else. I find that predisposition to certain schemas also maximize this effect, especially after reading a troubling news article about home invasion or watching a scary movie. In your particular scenario, your brain attributed your gym bag to a person you usually see. Probably the most amazing things about our brains is the ability to multitask, as we can perceive an object using top-down processing, realize almost instantaneously that our perception is wrong, and correct it immediately. In this case, and more so in the other cases regarding the news article or scary movie, accessibility and priming certainly play a crucial role, as that information is freshly imprinted in our minds, so therefore we automatically jump to the conclusion that the mystery object in our peripheral vision must be related to what is located in the forefront of our minds (Aronson, Wilson, Akert. 2014).

  3. Ashley A Connell

    I have to admit this type of situation has happened to me a few times as well. You almost have to sit there for a second and laugh at yourself for being frightened by something that didn’t exist. But you’re right, our brain makes us think we recognize something familiar (your home environment) and in your example someone sitting on the couch even when no one was home. It’s very true how you mentioned that your “previous knowledge of (your) environment affected (your) brains reasoning and result”. This is very similar to an example from our textbook where Crystal initially thinks she sees a large piece of driftwood far down the beach when she begins her run. But as she approaches the object, she begins to doubt her perception, and just as she is wondering whether it might not be driftwood, she realizes that it is, in fact, the old beach umbrella that was lying under the lifeguard stand yesterday (Goldstein, p.48). Similar to Crystal, you figured out what the object was based on remembering placing the Nike bag on the couch arm earlier. This reasoning process seems automatic, but we have learned from this chapter on perception it is much more complex. I’m glad it wasn’t an intruder in your home and that you didn’t have a heart attack; it’s been stimulating using this week’s lesson to figure out everything our body and mind is capable of.

    References:
    Goldstein, E. (2011). Introduction to Cognitive Psychology. In Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (3rd ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

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