Expectations Can Dominate Perception
Monday, July 11th, 2011
Over the last 30 years or so cognitive science has empirically shattered many of our basic assumptions about how the mind works. For example, we traditionally viewed human memory as a passive observe-store-record device that objectively captured information about the world. Now we understand memory as actively being constructed (rather than recorded) from information, expectations and mental models. We dynamically create our understanding of the world, we don’t document it like a tape recorder.
To see how dramatically our understanding of what we hear is shaped by the expectations we have, take six minutes to experience Stairway to Heaven Run Backwards.
Priming effects or other features and functions that create expectations before perceptions, are powerful cognitive design techniques. We make perceptions we do not have them.
