Inattentional blindness and copyediting.
Aug. 3rd, 2010 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abirdisnotI started reading Temple Grandin's "Animals In Translation," which I've been wanting to read for a while and never got around to. I'm very interested in cognitive psychology and the senses. How do different animals experience the world, sensorily as well as in more abstract ways?
Glancing at the coffee table, I saw a newspaper headline: AROUND THE ILSE: A young swimmer goes the distance.
The ilse? This jumped out at me right away. I'm a copyeditor, and I notice little things like that.
I don't think it's because I have copyediting experience that I notice these things. Rather, I think I was always prone to noticing them, and that's what drew me to copyediting or made it easy for me.
Temple Grandin talks about how she, and other autistic people, and animals, do not think verbally. Many people do; I sure as hell do. Ever since I was young, I would see a sort of page in my head, constantly. Black on white text, just like in a book. When I talk, when I hear words, when I think in words inside my head--I also "see it" in text.
This is useful. It's often a memory aid. But it causes difficulties as well.
For instance, I'm pretty good with languages (foreign ones, that is), but when they have a different alphabet, it's very hard for me to remember new words, recall what I've read etc. Very hard. If I do remember them, it's certainly going to be spelled out in English letters somewhere in my head, in addition to remembering their shape in the original letters. The transliterated spelling might still predominate.
It would be interesting to immerse myself for a long period in a place where everything (or the majority of things) was in another alphabet, e.g. Russia, Japan, Israel.
But the reason I started writing this post: Grandin talks about "inattentional blindness." Basically, us humans are very bad at noticing things we're not expecting to see. It's not that our eyes are incapable of perceiving the visual stimuli, it's that we don't notice or remember it.
There's a famous experiment in which participants are asked to watch a video of people playing basketball. They're told to count the number of passes a team makes. So there the people are, staring at the screen and carefully counting in their head.
About halfway through the video, a woman in a gorilla suit walks on to the middle of the basketball court, pounds her chest, and walks off.
About 50 percent of participants did not notice the gorilla at all! It's not that they noticed it but didn't pay it much mind. They were asked, "Did you see the gorilla?" which would be enough to prompt someone's memory. No, they really did not perceive it at all, because they were so focused on counting the passes.
In other experiments, people come into a room to fill out a form. Halfway through, the experimenter ducks behind a bookcase, and a completely different person emerges--different appearance, different clothing, etc. Many people don't even notice the switch.
I think it would be interesting to see where the threshholds are, with that. How different do the people have to be--and in what ways--before someone notices?
For instance, I suspect that if a man went behind the bookcase and a woman came out, people would notice, because they put "men" and "women" in different categories upon meeting them.
I suspect that the same would apply if the two people were of different races. And if, perhaps, one person was of regular stature and one person had dwarfism, that probably wouldn't go unnoticed. (But if BOTH people had dwarfism, etc...)
True. I can totally read this. And YET I am also prone to picking out typos (as are many people, I expect. It might just bug me more than average. Or perhaps all of us who notice just keep the annoyance to ourselves for the most part.) So what's up with this?
On the one hand, there's inattentional blindness. I'm expecting to see certain words and phrases, so maybe it stands to reason that I'd see what I expect, and not notice typos. But no, I do.
I wonder if this is because I see the words in my head, and the fact that what I read doesn't "match" the appearance in my head is immediately striking?
I think it would be interesting to do experiments on this.
Glancing at the coffee table, I saw a newspaper headline: AROUND THE ILSE: A young swimmer goes the distance.
The ilse? This jumped out at me right away. I'm a copyeditor, and I notice little things like that.
I don't think it's because I have copyediting experience that I notice these things. Rather, I think I was always prone to noticing them, and that's what drew me to copyediting or made it easy for me.
Temple Grandin talks about how she, and other autistic people, and animals, do not think verbally. Many people do; I sure as hell do. Ever since I was young, I would see a sort of page in my head, constantly. Black on white text, just like in a book. When I talk, when I hear words, when I think in words inside my head--I also "see it" in text.
This is useful. It's often a memory aid. But it causes difficulties as well.
For instance, I'm pretty good with languages (foreign ones, that is), but when they have a different alphabet, it's very hard for me to remember new words, recall what I've read etc. Very hard. If I do remember them, it's certainly going to be spelled out in English letters somewhere in my head, in addition to remembering their shape in the original letters. The transliterated spelling might still predominate.
It would be interesting to immerse myself for a long period in a place where everything (or the majority of things) was in another alphabet, e.g. Russia, Japan, Israel.
But the reason I started writing this post: Grandin talks about "inattentional blindness." Basically, us humans are very bad at noticing things we're not expecting to see. It's not that our eyes are incapable of perceiving the visual stimuli, it's that we don't notice or remember it.
There's a famous experiment in which participants are asked to watch a video of people playing basketball. They're told to count the number of passes a team makes. So there the people are, staring at the screen and carefully counting in their head.
About halfway through the video, a woman in a gorilla suit walks on to the middle of the basketball court, pounds her chest, and walks off.
About 50 percent of participants did not notice the gorilla at all! It's not that they noticed it but didn't pay it much mind. They were asked, "Did you see the gorilla?" which would be enough to prompt someone's memory. No, they really did not perceive it at all, because they were so focused on counting the passes.
In other experiments, people come into a room to fill out a form. Halfway through, the experimenter ducks behind a bookcase, and a completely different person emerges--different appearance, different clothing, etc. Many people don't even notice the switch.
I think it would be interesting to see where the threshholds are, with that. How different do the people have to be--and in what ways--before someone notices?
For instance, I suspect that if a man went behind the bookcase and a woman came out, people would notice, because they put "men" and "women" in different categories upon meeting them.
I suspect that the same would apply if the two people were of different races. And if, perhaps, one person was of regular stature and one person had dwarfism, that probably wouldn't go unnoticed. (But if BOTH people had dwarfism, etc...)
<url=http://www.douglastwitchell.com/scrambled_words.asp>Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
True. I can totally read this. And YET I am also prone to picking out typos (as are many people, I expect. It might just bug me more than average. Or perhaps all of us who notice just keep the annoyance to ourselves for the most part.) So what's up with this?
On the one hand, there's inattentional blindness. I'm expecting to see certain words and phrases, so maybe it stands to reason that I'd see what I expect, and not notice typos. But no, I do.
I wonder if this is because I see the words in my head, and the fact that what I read doesn't "match" the appearance in my head is immediately striking?
I think it would be interesting to do experiments on this.
