Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Updated 8-27-2006: Want to know more about these buildings? When were they built and why? Read our update.
Were the architects of this set of buildings on a U.S. Naval base in San Diego trying to tell us something? It's doubtful, but I dare you to post this on a conspiracist discussion forum. Hilarity is sure to ensue, especially after you mention that it was built by the U.S. Government.
This image taken from Google Maps has been making the rounds so you may have already seen it, but it nicely illustrates the human mind's predilection for perceiving patterns and extracting meaning from them. In Gestalt Psychology this is called Prägnanz, the theory that our brains attempt to perceive and interpret our senses as a unified whole and not in discrete units. In particular, this image is an example of the Gestalt Law of Closure where our brain fills in the missing elements.
It's from the Gestalt school that we get a lot of the ideas (and problems!) that have influenced modern Cognitive Science/Psychology and Neuroscience. While many of the ways the Gestalt School sought to explain the phenomena they were describing have been outmoded, it's still highly influential and a useful tool for introducing people to some of the ways their brains and senses work to build up their mental map of the world.
BTW: If you're wondering where these buildings are... Naval Base Coronado.
If you zoom out on the Google map (linked to above) you'll see that these buildings are on the little rectangular peninsula that juts out from North Island in the upper right hand part of the photo below.
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How our brains work to fill in missing details for us. A good modern example are those security checks when you sign up to a new forums or buy something online - you know, the series of numbers and letters that are distorted (sometimes so much so that you don't even know what they are) that you have to re-enter to prove you are a person. Our brains work to fill in the details that are removed or distorted so that we can make sense of the image whereas computers, at present, cannot do that.
I know that some of this stuff seems dull and mundane to many people. But what happens when you apply these principles to eyewitness identification and testimony? Memory is largely a reconstructive process that draws heavily on cues present at the time of retrieval to paint a coherent picture. When you retrieve a memory, the brain works hard at filling in the missing details. Combine that with mental schemas and preconcieved notions about ethnic groups or classes of individuals and you can start seeing a variety of very interesting things.
For example, Allen and Postman (1945) did a study where participants were presented with an image of two men on a subway--one white and one black--in an argument. In the image, the white man had a straight razor in his hand. In the recall phase, participants were asked which man was holding the razor. Want to guess what many people said?
It really helps show how our reality is a construct. It doesn't just apply to vision either. For instance, the Gestalt principle of invariance can be demonstrated in music. We can move a melody up and down the scale (changing its' key) and yet we continue to perceive it as the same melody. That's a pretty neat trick considering the relationship between the notes changes with key (the pattern of sharpened or flatted notes) so how is it we hear the same tune? Similarly, we have large leeway with the rhythm too. We can speed it up (shorten the length of the notes and spaces between them) or slow it down (extend the length of each) and we'll have no problem hearing the same old song. We can even shorten the length of some of the notes (like in syncopation). Sure it sounds different, it's a little hipper and maybe makes us want to dance or tap our feet, but we're still perceiving the same piece of music. How much must we change the tune before it's no longer recognizable and in what ways?
What you said about eyewitness testimony is a perfect example of where abilities that were likely selected for through evolution because they made for better hunters (the ability to perceive incomplete patterns, fill in the gaps, etc.) can trip us up. Which is one of the things that makes me think we have to add psychology, especially sensation and perception, to courses on critical thinking.
For instance, the Gestalt principle of invariance can be demonstrated in music. We can move a melody up and down the scale (changing its' key) and yet we continue to perceive it as the same melody. That's a pretty neat trick considering the relationship between the notes changes with key (the pattern of sharpened or flatted notes) so how is it we hear the same tune?
Minor clarification to that:
When a melody is played in different key signatures (A, G, Csharp), the interval between the notes remains the same. The relationship between them doesn't change. Yes, the notes that are flatted and sharped change, but not the space between the notes. However, if your point was regarding a change in Scale (Major, Minor, Diminished 7th etc), it would indeed be accurate. In that case some of the intervals do change, but the melody is still "recognizable".
