New Textbook on Cognitive Science

[drcy]

If anyone is interested in the topic have a new college textbook published titled 'Understanding Human Minds and Their Limits.' Peer reviewed by an Oxford University researcher and a U of Washington Medical School psychologist, it's an introductory textbook with the publisher's description being: "This book is an introduction to how minds work, including how they make judgments and perceptions, and processes sensory information. It looks at the physiological and psychological methods humans use to function and survive as a species, but that put limits on their knowledge and understanding of the universe, their immediate environment and themselves. Topics include information processing, cognitive biases, visual and audio illusions, perception and misperception of moving and still objects, art perception, limits of symbolic language, and social and evolutionary psychology." I think it's accessible to everyone, including of visual illusions that demonstrate the margins of error in human thinking.

Link to Book

[steve B]

That looks very interesting. I've read a bit of it, mostly related to odd visual effects and other processing errors.

For years I thought I had progressive hearing loss from doing industrial stuff. Pretty common. Then I got some treatment for ADD, and a nice side effect was that my hearing improved. In for example a busy restaurant I might only get 25% of the conversation at my table. But I would also get a bunch of the conversation at the table behind me, and bits of other conversations. With the medicine that really changed.

[drcy]

Attention is a major part of human thinking. There is too much sensory and other information for the brain to process, so humans both consciously and automatically focus on just some. In many cases, we have to suppress information to do things (Cover our ears to noise to comprehend difficult text). Though this very focus influences of perception of things.

Optical illusions and similar tricks ('is it a vase or two faces') are fun, but also very informative because they show the margins of error in our perceptions and inner workings of our brains. Our brains make automatic educated guesses and are far from omniscient, sometimes comically getting things wrong. As I say in the book, 'Visual illusions demonstrate that reality and human perception of reality are different things."

[Peter_Spaeth]

A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

Lie la lie, lie la la la lie lie
Lie la lie, lie la la la la lie la la lie

[frankbmd]

I’m thinking about posting on this thread.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Lie la lie, lie la la la lie lie
Lie la lie, lie la la la la lie la la lie

Let me correct you.

Lie la lie
Lie la la la lie la lie
Lie la lie
Lie la la la lie la lie
La la la la lie