Cognitive mapping, although not fully accepted for study by the psychology community until the 1970s (Goldstein, p. 10), is how the mind is able to create a “a mental picture of one’s physical or spatial environment” (Dictionary.com, 2018). 

In 1939, Edward Chance Tolman experimented with a rat in a maze, which supported the cognitive map theory (Goldstein, p.11).  In this experiment, Tolman had three trials with the rat.  The first trial, the rat explored the maze.  The second trial, Tolman placed food at one end of the maze and placed the rat at the same entrance in the first trial.  The rat found the food.  In the third trial, Tolman placed the food in the same spot as the second trial; however, placed the rat at a different end of the maze.  The rat surprisingly knew exactly where to turn to find the food even though he was placed at a different entrance (Goldstein, p. 11).

Like this experiment with the rat, humans also experience cognitive mapping.  For example, my building at work has two entrances.  The main entrance is most commonly used; however the second entrance is accessible on the side of the building.  The first time you enter the building, you explore the office and find out which way to the bathroom, kitchen, etc.  On your way to these different parts of the office, you would be able to paint a mental picture of the different offices you pass on your way to finding the kitchen and bathrooms.  On the way to the kitchen, you will see the second entrance.  Now, if you were to enter from the second entrance the next time you visited, using the mental mapping, you will be able to find the kitchen, bathroom and main entrance based on a mental map, even though you never came through the second entrance before.

Tolman’s work led to other developments such as language development by B.F. Skinner and Noam Chomsky (Goldstein, p 12).  Although Skinner and Chomsky’s theories of language development differed, both focused on how and why speech is corrected in children.  This can be compared to the cognitive mapping in the rat.  The rat made a cognitive map of the maze in order to be rewarded by obtaining the food (similar to Skinner’s theory in regards to children learning language and operant conditioning).  However, Chomsky’s theory of an inborn biological program is also plausible for the rat finding the food.

References

Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Cognitive Psychology (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

As I attempted to scribble down every word that came out of my professor while he demonstrated the techniques and elaborated the meanings behind every scene of the movie, I looked down at my notes and I realized that taking notes in this class is useless. This is one of my major classes where we discuss the prep, record, and post-production of a movie. Why did I say taking notes is useless? Not only that he posts everything online but this class is meant to inspire our inner cinematographers; to make us think why Steven Speilberg prepared the way he did during the pre-production of his movie “E.T.” not write down how he prepared for it. This is a class where students learn the perception of a great director.

This exercise right here is an important lesson for all young amateur cinematographers.

Every movie is a story told by someone. A director’s job is to make sure that story was sent out to the public the way the storyteller intended it to be. One of the reasons why Harry Potter made a black hole at every box opening was because, during the makings of the Harry Potter movie series, J.K. Rowling was heavily involved in the pre-production, casting, and the entire crew was introduced to her. Her vision of the series was shared throughout the set, even Chris Columbus (director of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) sat down with her and went through the play page by page. Chris Columbus did an amazing job at making sure they are on the same page before cameras started rolling. The screenplay, the casting, the mood of the movie was set and the results tanked every box office in the world as Harry Potter conjured people’s mind with magic.

Granted the screenplay was not 100% the same as the book, but the scenes we watched directly tells us the story J.K. Rowling meant to tell. Now looking back at what Chris did for the movie, besides the textbook instructions, he showed the public what J.K. Rowling showed him. Her perception. One of the reasons why I wanted to study film and psychology was to combine the two and create a movie or a video that will give people a temporary mind illusion. Whether the trick was in the plot or the pictures, people will want to understand what just happened and rewind and watch again. I want to be able to tell stories that not only speaks for the storyteller but share what they saw.

One of the reasons why I wanted to study film and psychology was to combine the two and create a movie or a video that will give people a temporary mind illusion. Whether the trick was in the plot or the pictures, people will want to understand what just happened and rewind and watch again. I want to be able to tell stories that not only speaks for the storyteller but share what they saw. I’ll have to think like them and able to put my feet in their shoes. To do that I’ll have to learn how to see what they see.

Changing perception allows people to see through other people’s eyes, and everybody does it. The police do it to catch the bad guys and doctors do it to cure patients. Perception can be as little as looking out in your right eye vs. your left; it could be as insane as going through the Escherian Stairwell. Perception is a constant learning process and when done thoroughly could help everyone understand each other.

The topic of perception seems to be an underlying theme in my life at the moment so it seemed only natural to discuss it here. After studying perception I get a general understanding of how many things or objects can be perceived and the driving forces behind the biological interpretation of how we perceive things, Top-down from the mind or bottom-up from the receptors. The Goldstein states, in the textbook, Cognitive Psychology, that, “perception is built on a foundation of information from the environment” (Goldstein, 59). The environment in a lot of cases can be very simply defined as a bright or dark. Even this form of stimulation can change the perception of an object one is viewing as we will see in the example below.

A few years ago, a major debate plagued the nation via social media. The debate on the whether a dress that was purchased by a random shopper, was blue and black or white and gold. This particular phenomena was interesting because each individual would perceive the dress as a different color but specific to those two types of categories. In other words, no other colors were seen.

This relates to the topic of perception and how our eyes, or the retina, receive objects and how specifically how light is refracted from that object to our vision to see what the object is displaying. The article written by Jonathan Corum has broken down these concepts in an intermediate discuss of the reflections of light and dark in the picture. He explains how the objects in the foreground and background can play a role in the perception of the color of the object, or that the amount of light actually in the room could be casting a shadow on that object. Similarly Goldstein explains a concept known as “Light-from-above assumption” though there are varying differences that must be noted about the two objects in topic, I think that the concept can be used to justify both of the illustrations in question. The textbook describes this explanation as, “ Usually we assume the light is coming from above, because light in our environment, including the sun and most artificial light, usually comes from above” (Goldstein, 67). Even if the light is not coming from directly above, the bending of the light on the object must be playing a role in the perception of that object and it’s refraction of light from different directions.

Corum, J.(2015, February 27). Is That Dress White and Gold or Blue and Black? Retrieved January 28, 2018, from https:// www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/28/science/white-or-blue-dress.html

Goldstein, E. B. (2018). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (4th ed.). S.I.: Wadsworth

Perception is thought of as the way we see or understand something. Generally speaking, we can define perception as our “view’” on something, but what does our “view” entail. How is it possible that two individuals can look at the same object from a distance, and have two different interpretations of what they are seeing? Why do people come to opposite conclusion when making decisions from the same information? Psychologists have long studied what affects individuals’ perceptions. Considering the differences that individuals have in regards to interpreting the same information, there must be more to perception than what meets the eye.

Psychology defines perception as experiences, resulting from the stimulation of senses. Experiences are key here, because each individual’s experiences are unique, and are driven in large part by their environment. We learned in Chapter 3 of our text that human perception is completed in two parts. There is bottom-up processing, where the environment stimulates human receptors, and then there is top-down processing, which is the processing that occurs as a direct result of individual experience and knowledge. Each part of the process plays an important role in how an individual will ultimately interpret what their receptors are sensing.

I recently viewed a video on social media where a comedian was asking for her fans to boycott Netflix. She was upset that she was offered less money than her counterparts to host a comedy special. The bosses at Netflix and the comedian both have two different perceptions of the same situation. From the comedian’s standpoint, they have already laid a foundation for their work. While they may not have done any major work in a few years, the awards and recognition received in the past should still stand for something. The Netflix bosses are taking a more what have you done for me lately approach. They are trying to generate views, which will generate dollars, and they don’t feel they can afford to pay an artist without a currently large following, as much as one who is more relevant. In turn, you have competing viewpoints, or perceptions. The comedian’s perceptions are biased and driven by past work and accomplishments, and the Netflix bosses’ perceptions, are biased by their goal of making money. They are viewing the exact same situation, through bottom-up processing, but their top-down processing differs, which creates a situation where the two sides perceptions are at odds.

When we think of perception, and how we view things, psychology teaches us we have to think deeper than just what we see. We have to look at why we perceive things a certain way. Why can two individuals interpret the same thing so differently? While the raw information that our receptors pick up is similar, the top-down processing that occurs is unique to each individual, and that is what drives how we interpret the information we receive.

This article is about using pulses from electrodes that are implanted in a specific part of the brain to help enhance memory. This article is related to the idea about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, but goes a little further in helping to correct the brain. It uses electrodes that are implanted in the part of the brain where memory is thought to work and the electrodes stimulate that part of the brain directly the way the TMS excites or inhibits that particular part of the brain from the outside.

This new technology is dubbed as the “pacemaker for the brain” where carefully placed electrodes are used to shock a specific part of the brain when those memory areas are functioning poorly or not all. Michael Kahana, who  works with the research team, is quoted as saying, “ We found that jostling the system when it’s in a low-functioning state can jump it to a high-functioning one.”(Carey, 2017). The researchers do caution that this research does not apply everywhere and that this particular study only looked at patients with epilepsy. However, this study does advance our knowledge about stimulating cognitive functioning and allows us to properly and more closely monitor cognitive functioning so that we can precisely stimulate cognitive areas at the right time to help improve thinking and memory in all types of patients who have some type of brain deficit.

The study conducted used 150 patients with some sort of cognitive functioning impairment. One group was given the electrodes (experimental group) and the other group was not given the electrodes (control group). Both groups were asked to memorize list a of words. Then they were both given a distraction. Afterwards, both groups were asked to recall as many words as they could. While they were recalling the information, the scientists also monitored the part of the brain that was related to memory encoding. They found that the experimental group remembered slightly more words than the control group. Dr. Kahana said, “ The average enhancement effect was about 12 to 13 percent” (Carey,2017). This study gives us hope that cognitive degeneration and impairment can be treated and possibly cured. We can combat brain degeneration and give hope for a better quality of life for people with cognitive impairment. The Department of Defense funded this study. They also funded another study using a group of people that had cognitive impairments due to epilepsy. However, this study found that the same treatment did not work for this group.

This study is very exciting in the break through to help people with brain trauma and cognitive impairments. It is like jump-starting the brain in order for it to work properly. I think this research is a big step in helping people and can be used to treat or cure people who are born with cognitive deficits. It could also be used to help people with other psychological disorders like depression, ADHD, ADD, and people in a coma. The specific neurons that we see working in a normal functioning brain can be used as a guide to find  the non working neurons in a person with a psychological disorder. These neurons can be stimulated by an electrode in order to jump-start it. I also think it can help people with alzheimer avoid losing brain cells that are not being used.  We could go inside the brain and specifically excite a particular neuron so that it does not degenerate and be lost forever.

Reference

Carey, Benedict. (2017, April 20). ‘Pacemaker’ for the Brain Can Help Memory, Study Finds. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/health/brain-memory-dementia-epilepsy-treatments.html

Gestalt’s Laws of Perception play an important role in our everyday lives. They allow our brains to make judgements and process information from very small visual cues. They are essential to help us survive on a primitive level, but they are also essential in our rapidly advancing world of technology. Many of the things we must perceive and make sense of are no longer tactile. They are presented on a screen, which has forced us to become fluent in 2D perception as well as 3D perception. Having access to virtually anything and everything online is great, but we have to realize that someone had to figure out how to give us the distinctions we need in the 2D format.

In reference to the first law, proximity, we have the need to group things that look close together. Knowing this, a web designer would be able to develop an efficient program for a user. For example, if you want to purchase a certain type of clothing(t-shirts) online. It would be easier for you to differentiate between a group of t-shirts than it would be for you to look t-shirts, pants, and shorts on the same page. Instead of paying full attention to things like different colors and styles, your brain would be trying to group all of the t-shirts together.

The second law that really comes into play in the 2D world is the common fate law. This is easier to describe in terms of video games. For example, in first person shooter games, the enemy usually can be seen on a map as red dots, all grouped together. Regardless of the red signifier they are given, your brain tells you that those dots all moving in a cluster in the same direction are a group of the same thing. Therefore, they are your target in the game.

The Gestalt Laws of Perception are essential to life. First, our world was 2D and everything we encountered were actual, tactile objects. But, in a new age of technology, and thanks to the brain’s ability to adapt to the body’s environment rather quickly, we are able to differentiate objects in a 2D world too. Additionally, knowing how the human brain perceives is essential to being a successful designer in a 2D realm.

References:

Banks, M. (2013, November 29). The importance of Gestalt laws for UX design planning. Retrieved January 28, 2018, from http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2013/11/29/importance-gestalt-laws-ux-design-planning

“The Müller-Lyer illusion is an optical illusion consisting of a set of lines that end in arrowheads. The orientation of the arrowheads affects one’s ability to accurately perceive the length of the lines. Like most visual and perceptual illusions, the Müller-Lyer illusion helps neuroscientists study the way the brain and visual system perceive and interpret images. Artists have also utilized the illusion to great effect in their works” (New World Encyclopedia 2014). Optical illusions have a significant impact on perception, particularly visual perception. The Muller-Lyer illusion, as discussed is an optical illusion of lines with identical lengths perceived to be of different lengths, is one example of the effects on visual perception. This optical illusion is utilized in various industries. We can see the effects of this optical illusion in the fashion industry particularly.

Observe the fashion industry and what they strive to accomplish with their models. On the runway, the goal image of a model is that of a perfectly proportioned, tall, and slender being. In order to attain this goal to perfection, the fashion industry mimics the Muller-Lyer illusion in the creation of clothing. Different line lengths, thickness, and angles are used to create different visual perceptions.

Everyone wants to look their best, their most perfect selves whether it be thinner all over, taller, smaller in particular areas, wider, and shapelier. Optical illusions are used in fashion to attain a desired look for everyday people as well. Consider a high cut women’s bathing suit, with the angle of the bikini line to the waist area being more drastically angled and dramatic, a woman’s legs can be perceived as longer and slenderer. With the perfect arrangement of lines, optical illusions can completely alter visual perception of a person. “The diagonal stripes of varying widths and directions on this dress trick the eye into seeing a narrow waist. They also flatter the cleavage and hips, as diagonal stripes should always sit on the areas you want to appear smaller” (Scarborough 2015). This one particular designer discusses the exact use of lines in particular areas to create and enhance different looks. We can see how the optical illusion of the lines are a direct influence on the visual perception of a person.

References:

New World Encyclopedia Contributors. (2014) Muller-Lyer Illusion. In New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved from newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/muller-lyer_illusion.

Scarborough, E. (2015) Fashion illusions for every figure: From a trimmer waist to minimizing big busts, it’s all a trick of the eye. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3026633/Fashion-illusions-figure-trimmer-waist-minimising-big-busts-trick-eye.html

Our brains have the capacity re-shape themselves to change in response to different environmental stimuli. Experience-dependent plasticity provides that mammals brought up in a certain environment have neurons that change so they become tuned to respond more strongly to aspects of that specific environment (Goldstein, 2015). Let’s say there is a dog (A) that was reared in a loving home with a family of four and gets love and attention every day. On the other side of the spectrum, there is the same breed of dog (B) who was born outdoors, reared in the wild, and has to survive on its own. If these two dogs swapped environments, their perception on the new environment and their responses would differ dramatically from their home environment.

If dog A were thrown into the wild after years of living indoors with a family, this particular dog might be extremely scared. This dog was reared in an environment consisting of love, affection and playfulness, but now has to face a complete culture change, find its own food, and protect itself. Dog A has neurons that have been shaped to respond to love and affection from humans, so when it is in the wild and there are no humans, but other animals that may be out to harm him, his feature detectors in his visual cortex may lack some response in defending himself.  Dogs are naturally instinctual, just as humans are, so dog A may adapt very quickly to his exposure, but his first responses to danger or harm may not be as quick in the beginning as they would, say two weeks later. After some conditioning in the wild, dog A’s brain would re-shape and respond better to the new exposed environment.

Now, if dog B were rescued and brought into the family home, it may be dangerous for the family. Dog B has a response of defensive mechanisms to protect him and may result in attacking, biting or growling at the family when approached abruptly. His sensory neuron type is very different from dog A and he is more exploratory, more defensive, and untrained. Maybe the family gives dog B a stick and tries to play with him by taking it and throwing it. When one might try to take the stick, dog B could potentially attack the human because he is familiar with protecting himself from wild animals.  Eventually after continued exposure to the family and some training, dog B would become adapted to respond differently to the particular actions.

This same situation could be related to humans as well, when we forego a complete culture change. When one has a lifetime of experience in the free world, then suddenly goes to jail, their experience-dependent plasticity really gets put to the test. It includes adaptation for the brain’s functioning to be “tuned” to operate best in that certain situation or environment (Goldstein, 2015).  Perception is the outcome of brain receptors and experiences or expectations interacting with one another in different environments (Goldstein, 2015). Dog A and dog B would both adapt to their new environments eventually, but it is hard to say what their perception might be. For humans, one would probably assume jail is like what they have seen on T.V. or in movies, but once in that environment, may adapt either quickly or slowly, or maybe even never fully adapt because our brain receptors tell us that it is just temporary.

It is truly intriguing to become aware of our perception when possible, although it is so automatic majority of the time. When we are consciously aware of what we are experiencing and receiving from our environment, we can change the receptors in our brain to adapt accordingly.

Goldstein, E. B. (2017). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience, 4th Edition. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.