Perception, Attention and Memory

Perception

Our brain percieves things very fast, lot faster then a computer. It all begins with eye, but even then there are too many question. It is believed that brain understands things by these three ways:

Perception of brightness

Our brain automatically brightens an object in light and darken an object in light. This can create an illusion in some cases.

Adelson’s Same Color Illusion - BrainHQ from Posit Science

Perception of depth

Brain is capable of understanding depth. If we see a small object growing in size, we automatically realise that it is moving towards us.

Shepard’s Rotated Tables

Perception of objects

Our brain is very good in recognising patterns. By recognising these patterns we are able to differetiate different objects which are visible.

Attention

Our brain is capable of paying attention to which it feels neccessary or oblidged to do.

Stroop effect

In psychology, the Stroop effect is the delay in reaction time between congruent and incongruent stimuli. The effect has been used to create a psychological test that is widely used in clinical practice and investigation.

This video tells that we are not very attentive in our day to day life.

Memory

Memory is complicated. The memory can use below mentioned terms:

1. Explicit memory: It includes known facts like capital of country, date of birth, etc.
2. Implicit memory: We dont remember it consciously like driving, breathing, etc.
3. Semantic: It can be again like capital of country or we can say known facts.
4. Episodic: We remember certain episodes of our life like our happiest moment, etc.
5. Encoding: Information stored in head
6. Storage: Space where we store the information
7. Retrieval: The process of extracting memory out of storage.
8. Recall: We remember certain things which are triggered due to some sensory actions.
9. Recognition: Like we instantly know the name of the person, etc.

Memory storage

1. Sensory memory: These are the memory which are there due to some sensory triggers. Like we might not be paying attention but if someone asks were we listening, we actually go back to our auditory memory and try retrieving the information.
2. Short term memory: This is a memory which holds information for a very short duration. The golden number given to store information is 7 +/- 2 chunks (basic unit of storing information). We need to rehearse continuously to refresh and keep the memory.
3. Long term memory: This is which is encoded in our brain. It stays for a long period of time but it also needs to get refreshed.

How to get things to long term memory?

1. Depth of processing sends information to Long term memory: If we have deeper analysis of knowledge then it is more likely to be stored in long term memory
2. Mnemonics: Make connections among chunks
3. Understanding: If we have the right context of our memory, we are more likely to hold it for long duration

Remembering

How to get information out of memory?

1. Retrieval cues: We can have some story associated with the memory. We can use that story to extract the information
2. Compatibility principle: We remeber information when we try to recover information in the same context we stored them.
3. Searching strategy: We remember things if we change our search starategy like trying recovering from different angles.

Failures of memory

1. Why do we forget?
   1. Because memory are physical things so they fade overtime
   2. Because of interference: New information kind of overwrites
   3. Change of retrieval cues
2. Forgetting due to brain damage (amnesia)
   1. Retrograde amnesia: loss of memory prior to stroke or accident
   2. Anterograde amnesia: lose the capacity to form the memory

False memories

Why are memories are sometimes distorted?

1. Expectations: When we increase the expectations
2. Leading questions: Questions can sometime fill in the story so to make the questions correct.
3. Hypnosis: We try creating a strory
4. Repressed memory: Memories which are repressed can be turned into false story
5. Flashbulb memory: Memories associated to some disaster can be manipulated by the brain