Just the other day I had been having a conversation with one of my girlfriends laying there laughing and carrying on. As we concluded our conversation and ended the call, I got up from my bed and walked over toward my jewelery box. I had noticed on the floor by the side of it there was a mouse just sitting there. I immediately freaked out and began to scream thinking the thing would run away. Strangely there was not movement at all. I began to freak out even more thinking this thing is dead and I’m going to have to pick it up and get it out of here.

After screaming for about 10 seconds. I began to try and figure out how I would pick this up and get it out of my house. I started searching around my room trying to find something to pick it up with. After searching for all of 5 minutes I began to panic thinking, I need to call someone to get this thing. I was so disgusted and didn’t want to deal with it. I finally got up the courage and ran downstairs to get a plastic bag out of the kitchen. At this moment while slowly walking up the stairs with the bag in hand, I’m thinking oh boy I’m really going to have to touch this thing.

Finally after getting to the top of the stairs I took a deep breath and walked into my room, looked over to the side of the jewelery box; and to my surprise it had been my extension cord that I had been screaming over the entire time. It turns out the part of the extension cord that looked like the “body” of the mouse was the part where you would plug something in and the what looked like the “tail” of the mouse was the actual cord. I began laughing at myself and thinking back to all the screaming I had done over an extension cord.

This is particularly interesting because this experience had a great deal to do with perception. According to the text (Goldtein, B) perception is defined as experiences resulting from stimulation of the senses (P.49). “Perception can change based on added information” (Goldstein, B). This is exactly what happened to me after I saw what I thought was a mouse. The added information in this case was my view of the so called “mouse” from a different angle. What I mean is that once more information (the way the object was seen from my angle of the stairs) was added into my view I was able to see the object for what it really was.

According to the text, “the concept of recognition by components (RBC) states that we percieve objects by perceiving elementary features called geons” (Goldstein, B). “Geons are perceptual building blocks that can be combined to create objects” (Goldstein, B). “According to RBC we can recognize an object if we are able to perceive just a few of its geons” (Goldstein, B). I believe because I was able to see a few of the cord’s geons, I was able to accurately determine that it was actually a cord and not a mouse. I was able to put the “pieces” together in my mind and form an accurate picture to let my brain know that it was just a cord, something that was supposed to be there in my room.