Video Transcript: Perceptual Systems

Working with people interactively. You're coaching them, having a great  counseling session. And then the moment comes after the second session.  Third session, you're well into the fourth session, and you ask your counselee, I  hear you saying that you and your spouse aren't getting along. And she retorts.  She responds immediately, saying that's not what I said. I said we were working  on our problems, indignant, and as the counselor you are then sitting there a bit  chagrined, but taking it all in and trying to make sense of what she is saying  about she and her husband and the process that they're going through in  resolving their issues, hearing, listening, encoding, where we give input,  decoding, where we process input, is exactly what psychology helps us to  understand as we look at sense perception. The last video we talked about  sensing and perceiving, this now follows up the sensory experience as we look  at interactivity, how we listen and how we connect. Especially as we think we  have heard things right, if we we have seen things correctly, but we don't. And  vice versa, what Conversely, when it comes from the counselee and and she  thinks, or he thinks, I thought you said this, counselor, Pastor, weren't you trying  to help me with my disdain about me or my disdain about my spouse? And you  were saying, No, it's not what I was trying to say at all, not only misperception,  but also trying to understand with perception. Well, it takes us into the  perceptual system. The perceptual system and the perceptual system takes us  into sensory interaction. And sensory interaction is that working together of  different senses to create experiences, working together of different senses to  create experience, where my eyes and my ears and my other senses together,  taste touch, are trying to make sense of what is happening in front of me, and  then to draw some conclusions, but often we draw false assumptions. The goal,  of course, with the sense of perception is that we use our senses to better  understand the person, to hear correctly, to to see correctly the emotion on the  person's face and and of course, when we sense that person may be sad,  maybe they're really mad, or if a person is jovial, maybe they're really angry.  They're putting on a face, a mask. Our perceptions do need to be as accurate as possible, as we help the best way we can, as listeners, as counselors, as  pastors, and that working together of different senses to create an experience.  This is the framework context that we always want to keep psychology in, how  we help people and perpetual system takes us from sensory interaction then  into what we call the McGurk effect. The McGurk effect, as you may recall, I just  said that sometimes we don't get it right, and we need to listen more carefully.  Perception can be quite a deception. See, McGurk effect is an error in sound  perception that occurs when there is a mismatch between senses of hearing  and. Seeing an error in sound perception that occurs when there is a mismatch  between the senses of hearing and seeing, and so as what we often then think  we are understanding the person is saying. It's often not. For example, when I  was in my high school choir and Mr Scott was teaching us how to do vocal 

inflection and projection and also diction and being mindful of how we enunciate  using our tongues and teeth and lips and mouth, and just as I'm I'm always  conscious now of how I come across here In the video, always trying to  articulate very well. However, when we were in our rehearsal practice sessions  in class with Mr Scott before a big concert, he would say, Now, if you run stuck,  if you don't remember some of the verses, or parts of the verses, as we are in  concert, one of the techniques is to make the audience think that you know the  words to the song that we are Singing all together. Is this, use the word  watermelon. Why? Because using the word watermelon, watermelon,  watermelon, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon, if,  for some reason, he would say to us as high schoolers, you just blank. It isn't  there just mouth, the words watermelon, watermelon, watermelon. Again, using  the diction and the form of your mouth, and also how you project watermelon,  watermelon, watermelon now as a speaker, as a pastor who preaches, or if  you're in front delivering a special speech, you can't get away with that.  However, in a group, of course, you are then amongst other singers, you are  then following along with the orchestra or the band that's playing the tune, and  you are then or the track, and your and it's playing the tune of the song you are  performing, and the audience is taking it all in, and you get stuck. And Mr Scott  said, watermelon, watermelon. Such is the McGurk effect. McGurk effect also  describes too, when, when our lips again with a watermelon. Here's the point  water, our lips move, and that we are saying watermelon. But the people think  what they're seeing, perceiving is, are the actual songs of the hymn, or the  contemporary hymn that you are singing in the concert? Now we have a label  for it. Now we understand it all. That's the Gert McGurk effect, of course, and  also what we then think a person may be mumbling or saying in counseling  sessions they really aren't. That's why the McGurk effect is that error in sound  perception that occurs when there is a mismatch between what we see and  hear. And for the McGurk effect, of course, just as a reminder, these videos are  overviews. We're not going to get into all the details in these videos, but the  overview, the highlights, the brushstrokes, that's what we're getting into with this  chapter today. This topic as part of your process of the for the course in  psychology the perceptual system also talks about selective attention, which is  the ability to focus on some sensory inputs while tuning out others. Let's say, for  example, your spouse, if it's your wife, husband or wife, if it's your husband and  you're trying to tell him where you're trying to tell her all about the story, about  what happened today? And your spouse has something else on her mind or his  mind. They're thinking about work, they're thinking about the kids, they're  thinking about what's gonna what they're gonna eat for dinner, spaghetti or  pizza. And you're trying to tell the story and and it's you're going to detail and an  expression passion. And they by about 10 minutes into the story, you notice  there's something not going on to not You're not connecting. And honey, you 

know what I mean, and they kind of break out what huh, or they may be listening to you and they're tracking, and they under hearing about the content and  chunks of the content, about what happened with her, with him at the workplace  and and what happened as you were driving down the road and swerving to  miss that that deer. But they they don't hear everything, selective attention. You  know what it's like, Yeah, honey, sure. Uh huh, I hear you and you didn't. You  use what we well, we always joke about selective hearing. I'm not listening.  Okay? Yeah, we are selective in how we sometimes listen. Same is true for this  effect of the perpetual system we choose. We have the ability to choose, to  select and focus on some sensory inputs while tuning out others, and  sometimes it happens in our marriages or in whether in our interaction with our  colleagues at the church or the ministry or the organization we work for, or the  corporate place we work for. If you're working the corporate world and they just,  they're not just, they really don't care listen to you, or maybe they're just feeling  like, I'll listen to you, but only just so much, because I am selecting to hear some of it, just so I know enough to say, Uh huh, okay, and make sure you know I'm  listening. Or, of course, other situations where you're in a crowded room And  and you are selecting what you ought you need to hear and what you don't want to hear. The brain has the ability to compartmentalize, we say, to sort that out.  And so selective attention is that terminology. And from selective attention, we  go to Synesthesia. Synesthesia is what we call an experience in which one  sensation creates experiences in another. So for example, the one sensation  you may smell that shift in the wind out in the farmer's field, and they have a lot  of cow pies, we say a lot of cow dung. And at first, when you walked into that  beautiful farmland, it smelled great. It was fresh smells of the farm. But then the  wind shifts and the dung smell comes through. And ooh, is it pungent, almost to  the point, and almost similar to my experience I was, I was in fourth grade. My  dad and I, we went to Iowa, here in the United States, a lot of farms, pig farms.  And we visited this pig farm. And farmer Doug, he brought us to the pigs, and  they were en masse. And I was, I was thinking, Oh, I see with the one sensation  I see, all these pigs are very interesting. They're cute. And also, I was brought to the fence where they were all, all jammed in together. And then I noticed that the shift in the wind and the smell, whoo, it was pungent. I It was nauseating. Well,  same thing in the whole farm field, example, that wind shifts. I smell one thing,  but then the one sensation, but it brings on another sensation in my olfactories,  and I get a little nauseated with what I'm smelling at the moment. Well, that's  what synesthesia is trying to explain. We have one experience that then creates  another, more detail in your book. So from the synesthesia that brings us into  the whole discussion of sensory adaptation, you see, sensory adaptation is a  decreased sensitivity to a stimulus after prolonged and constant. Exposure. So  with sensory adaptation, in other words, we then, of course, just as the definition is saying, we then we are sensitivity to a particular stimulus. Let's go back to the 

dung example. We then that that prolonged sensitivity then is goes down when  we then are exposed to it for a long time. So if I'm in that farmer's field and I'm  smelling the dung smell at first, oh, it's nauseating. But then my sensories, my  

sensory adaptation that is with my my senses of smell and and also other  senses that go with it and taste, if you will, kind of goes in there too. You can  almost taste the smell. It then adapts. We then get used to it, we say. And that's  all. It's the same. As far as adaptation, adaptation, and so from sensory  adaptation, we then go to perceptual constancy, the ability to perceive a stimulus as constant despite changes in sensation. I'll say it again, the ability to perceive  a stimulus as constant despite changes in sensation. So, for example, I have my mug of coffee at first, ooh or hot, but it tastes good, and as a prolonged,  prolonged sensitivity to the hotness of the liquid, but then I get used to it, and  then what happens is I then adapt. And yet the experience is constant. It doesn't change. But my senses adapt to the temperature and the experience of taste  and tasting, the act thereof, of the liquid. So that's where these terms come into  play about adaptation senses and decreased sensitivity? Well, then there's this  other adaptation that happens in our senses, as far as what we listen to and  don't listen to, kind of going back to the McGurk effect, is how called the cocktail  party phenomenon. And the cocktail farm party phenomenon is this, via or by  way of selective attention, we simultaneously do a lot of unconscious monitoring of the world around us. Now, in the next video, we're gonna talk about  consciousness, the subconscious, the conscious and so forth, but here we're  only gonna touch on it just a little content. The cocktail party phenomenon is  where we have selective attention and as we are in a crowded room at a party,  for example, and maybe a socially distanced room at this point, of course, put  our masks on that. Now that's another discussion about about different  sensitivities and interactivity, but we simultaneously do a lot of unconscious  monitoring of the world around us. So for example, you may be in that crowded  room where there are many other groups of people around you, and you're in  you're with your little circle of two or three people. You're talking and and talking  about weather, and talking about about your kids and and talking about, but we  hope to do with CLI as far as your bachelor's degree, and going on for the  master's degree. And then at the end of the interaction, and at the end of the  party, you, you, you pull your friend aside and say, what was going on with Tom  and Jack and Sue in that group that was on the other side of the room now, boy,  they were laughing, but, but also, then it was, it was hush hush tones and, and it was, it was they were looking around and, and, and all of a sudden paranoia  came into me and I didn't know what to do. There was the fear of it. What was  going on, Tim, what was going on? And he says to you, I just, I don't know. I  heard it too. I was curious. I noticed the periphery, the periphery of my eye, of  what was happening there, the cocktail party effect is that we take in that stimuli  as we are also engaged in the stimuli that's right in front of us, but our brains are

able to then take in other stimuli as it's coming from another part of the room  around us. Yet we don't necessarily hear everything, or process everything, or  understand everything. Going back to the Gestalt theory, we then also have a  form of this. There is a form, a form of the group that we catch and periphery our eye, that in terms of mood, also tenor, also tone, also volume, also interactivity,  and we pick it all up, and then It raises questions about intent, motive, mood,  attitude, interesting how the biology of psychology plays into the cognitive part of psychology, the behavioral part of psychology, which we're now easing into now  as we look at adaptation and stimulus and also sensitivity the perpetual system,  so a cocktail party effect, that is, in fact, a fascinating effect or affect effect, well,  that takes us, then also into illusions. Illusions. Illusions are well common. They  are called the perceptual processes that normally help us correctly perceive the  world around us are fooled by a particular situation so that we see something  that does not exist or that is incorrect. I'll repeat it so we understand it. The  perceptual processes that normally help us correctly perceive the world around  us are fooled by a particular situation, so that we see something that does not  exist or that is incorrect, much like the whole work of Houdini back in the early  20th century or late 19th century. In the 20th century, Houdini was the master of  illusion. It can make his escapes look impossible, but there's an illusion going on there, also with the whole thing of sawing the girl in half on stage. It's an illusion. Well, there are other illusions that psychologists also observe. The first one is  the Mueller-lyer illusion, pictured here the line segment in the bottom arrow  looks longer to us than the one on the top. However, they are both the same  length. Take a moment and look at that. At these lines, the lines in red on the  right, lines also on the left, and they seem to be having one line longer than the  other, but the illusion is, is that they are not there isn't one longer than the other.  It's actually two lines. They're the same length, but made to look longer than the  other. Well, there's also something called the Moon illusion. Now, the Moon  illusion is character is also attributed to what airline pilots also have in terms of  the effect that they experience. I'll explain that here in a minute. But the Moon  illusion is this, the moon, the moon is perceived to be 50% larger when it is near  the horizon, then when it is seen overhead, in both cases, the moon is the same size and casts the same size. Retinal image, which is pretty straightforward. It's  pretty straightforward. So we look at the moon and if it's, if it's, you know, if we  perceive it 50% larger when it's near the horizon than when it seems overhead,  but it's the same size when it comes to the retinal image. So illusions, perceptual processes that normally help us because we perceive the world around us are  fooled by a particular situation, so we see something that does not exist or that  is incorrect, which takes us into the next term called embodiment. Embodiment.  Now embodiment is where we build into the link. Link and Link the environment  with our cognition. In other words, what we see around us, we build it into our  our our brains, our our framework in our minds around us. So if we are in that 

farmers field, where our whole brain then bring the farmers field into the whole  context of our experience and the world around us becomes part of our brain.  This is a great cartoon. You probably have read the byline here already. Good  

news, the doctor says the test results show it's a metaphor, and you see the  knife, and the gentleman's back, and he's trying to get some answers.  Embodiment says, Wait a minute, the knife. And no joke here, course, in not that having a knife in your back is good. It's disturbing. But of course, maybe it's  illusion. Maybe it's a fake knife and the fake stabbing. And of course, magicians  have used that trick for for decades, that knife is in the back. It seems like in the  back. It's not in the back. It's an illusion. However, the embodiment term says,  No, we build what we see right in front of us into in our environment, into our  thinking, and the world around us becomes part of our brain and what we see  and perceive and also then do and be well, of course, the joke here that it's a  metaphor. Well, let's come back to the whole moon illusion, just to wrap it up  here for today, these are two pictures of the same of two different cockpits,  rather in an airplane. These are commercial airlines. The image on the left is  what the book tells us, and you read it, the whole story in there, in your textbook, is the initial design of an airplane cockpit, a lot of dials, a lot of buttons, and of  course, you have the controls and so on. That was the first design that was  there for quite a while. However, as researchers got to know better and better  what the Moon illusion was was like for an airline pilot, because as the airline  pilot flies in and sees the the lights in the city and also along the runway, they  seem larger than life, and they have an illusion that they're they're closer than  what they really are, and so on. So you see, then the new design of the airplane  cockpit on the right, taking into all the findings and and research results. They  then redesigned the cockpit to be more friendly to the human being. So as the  more illusion as the pilot, for example, look out the window and try to ascertain  what is really going on with with the the clouds, and also there's fog or and of  course, that the lights coming off in the distance with the city they're about to  land in the instruments now better help that pilot, he or she to better understand  what's happening on the runway and to make a safe landing, minimizing  accidents, well sense perception, many fascinating concepts and also terms To  help us understand better our experience as human beings, but also to help us  understand the experience of those that we minister to as they see the world  around them. It's pretty straightforward here, for example, as you look at how a  person then perceives and takes in with their senses, the abuse, the  expressions of love from their spouse or significant other, and their problems,  they come to you as God's representative, as you come to them as God's  representative, as an ambassador of the gospel, as a listener, there to help we  now understand, with the help of psychology, which comes right out of Scripture, why and how a person experiences what she experiences, or what he  experiences, is able to better process thanks to Carl Rogers, Carl Jung and also

our other researchers, which we looked at in our second video, as far as the  history of psychology and the research that those. Pioneers, did we now better  understand how it all comes together, to better help and direct a person to God  and to the processes God's given them, and where the Holy Spirit begins to do  the healing process one step at a time, it's been good to look at the perpetual  system of you, and now we go into the states of consciousness next.