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PERCEPTION IS EXTERNALLY GUIDED HALLUCINATION
How the mind makes use of information gathered from the external world has been a major concern for philosophers and psychologists throughout history. Exactly how do we use the information gained through our senses? In the early 1970s, cognitive and mathematical psychologist Roger Shepard proposed new theories of how the brain processes “sense data”.
Shepard argued that our brains not only process sense data, but also make inferences from it, based on an internal model of the physical world where we can visualize objects in three dimensions. The experiment he used to prove this, in which subjects tried to ascertain whether two tables – each drawn from a different angle – were the same, showed that we are able to perform what Shepard called “mental rotation”: turning one of the tables in our mind’s eye for comparison.
Shepard used a series of optical (and aural) illusions to demonstrate that our brains interpret sense data using both knowledge of the external world and mental visualization. Perception, Shepard said, is “externally guided hallucination”, and he described the processes of dreaming and hallucination as “internally simulated perception”. Shepard’s research introduced revolutionary techniques for identifying the hidden structure of mental representations and processes.
His work in visual and auditory perception, mental imagery, and representation has influenced generations of psychologists. An optical illusion creates confusion in the viewer, demonstrating that we are not just perceiving, but also attempting to fit the sensory data to what we already understand in the mind’s eye.
MORE TO KNOW…
APPROACH
Perception
BEFORE
1637 René Descartes in his treatise(论文) Discourse on the Method suggests that though our senses can be deceived, we are thinking beings with innate knowledge.
1920s Gestalt theorists study visual perception, finding that people tend to view objects comprising composite parts as a unified whole.
1958 Donald Broadbent’s book Perception and Communication introduces a truly cognitive approach to the psychology of perception.
AFTER
1986 American experimental psychologist Michael Kubovy publishes The Psychology of Perspective and Renaissance Art.
WE ARE CONSTANTLY ON THE LOOKOUT FOR CAUSAL CONNECTION
Until very recently, our perception of risk and the way that we make our decisions was considered to be more a matter of probability and statistics than psychology. However, cognitive psychology, with its emphasis on mental processes, brought the concepts of perception and judgment to the field of problem-solving, with some surprising results.
Israeli-American Daniel Kahneman, together with Amos Tversky, re-examined theories of how we make decisions when faced with uncertainty, in Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (1974). They found the general belief that people made decisions based on statistics and probability was not true in practice. Instead, people base their decisions on “rule of thumb” – on specific examples or small samples. Consequently, judgments can frequently be wrong, as they are based on information that comes easily to mind, rather than that has actual probability.
"After observing a long run of red on the roulette wheel, most people erroneously believe that black is now due."
Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky
Kahneman and Tversky noticed this experience-based method of problem-solving has a pattern: we tend to overestimate the likelihood of things with low probability (such as a plane crash), and underestimate those with a higher probability (such as crashing while drink driving).These findings formed the basis of Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory, proposed in 1979, and led to the collaborative field of psychology known as behavioural economics.
MORE TO KNOW…
APPROACH
Prospect theory
BEFORE
1738 The Dutch-Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli proposes the expected utility hypothesis to explain decision-making preferences in situations involving risk.
1917 Wolfgang Köhler publishes The Mentality of Apes – his study of problem-solving in chimpanzees.
1940s Edward Tolman’s studies on animal behaviour open up a new area of research into motivation and decision-making.
AFTER
1980 US economist Richard Thaler publishes the first paper on the subject of behavioural economics: Toward a Positive Theory of Consumer Choice.
以下是我写的关于The Psychology Book的其他章节，欢迎各位前来观看 ^ ^
