by Flemming Funch
Curt Rosengren mentions a fine little article in Discover Magazine about how our brains are wired for getting us what we expect we'll get, even when it doesn't make sense."Touch a pencil with all five fingertips of one hand, close your eyes, and ponder: If each fingertip forms a distinct tactile "image" of the pencil, why do you perceive a single pencil instead of five unconnected pencil fragments? The answer is that your brain has special circuits that help you build complete pictures from fragmented sensory information. In effect, these gap-filling circuits induce your brain to perceive what it expects to see, instead of what it actually sees. When these expectations accurately reflect the objective world around you, your perceptions will be on target. Sometimes, however, what your brain expects to see is far from an accurate representation of reality." It then has some practical exercises for demonstrating this, which you've probably done as a kid and forgotten. Like, demonstrating to you that you actually have two noses.The way that expectations shape perceptions has important implications for education. The developing brain processes complex perceptions, such as how difficult an academic subject is, in much the same way it handles simpler sensory information. If a student is led to expect that mathematics is difficult, even simple numerical problems may be perceived as unsolvable. Plain as the nose on your face, what you believe determines what you achieve. I seem to remember experiments done with prisoners on death row that convinced them that they were dying, when they really weren't. They were promised money for their favorite charity or something. And then, you know, they were blindfolded and their arm anesthesized so they couldn't feel it, and then told that their veins were cut, so the blood would run out, and the point was to see how long they would stay conscious. And sound effects were produced that made it sound like blood was rushing out, even though it wasn't. And the guy died, because he was sure he would. I think they stopped the experiment after the second prisoner died the same way. Anybody has a reference on that? Sorry about the bloody story.
Anyway, the constructive point is of course that we can just as well get ourselves and others into expecting wonderful, magical and positive things to happen. And, again, the point is to do it sufficiently thoroughly that we actually succeed.
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