Conscious of the Present; Conscious of the Past Language

一、感知：
设计程序使电脑从一个场景中分辨出不同的物体是极其困难的。
我们拥有关于世界如何运作的无意识假设，这些假设让我们能够做出从二维数字到三维世界的能够做出有根据的猜测。
传到你眼中的信息只是冰山一角，来自单一光源照射的光亮程度，只是供你作出某种假设并得出结论的一个依据而已。

而后讲各种错觉。

二、注意和记忆：

（一）广义上遗忘症分为两种：
一是你遗忘了关于过去的记忆。
另一种是马特·达蒙遗忘症：你丧失了形成新记忆的能力。

（二）记忆分类：
1、
①感觉记忆是一种感觉的残留，包括影像、声像。
②短时记忆（工作记忆）
③长时记忆
2、
①外显记忆是你能够意识到的记忆。
②内隐记忆是无意识的但你仍能够做到它（骑自行车）。
3、
①语义记忆基本是对客观事实的记忆，单词的意义。
②情景记忆是自传式的，即你的经历。

（三）记忆的不同阶段：
1、编码，使信息进入记忆的过程。
2、储存，记忆的保持。
3、提取，将记忆取出。提取可以分为回忆和再认，回忆就是你将记忆中的信息重现，再认是当与过去有关的情景出现时，你能够认识的心理过程。

（四）进入记忆的信息是由什么决定的，一种说法是 “注意决定”。

注意特点：
变化盲视：当你注意某个事物时你的注意是有限的，会忽略掉其他的事物。
人们并不会注意到人们在一定程度上会忽视周遭的变化，奇怪的是我们自己并没有发觉，我们以为自己看到了世界的全部（丹·赛门斯的实验）。
变化盲视在总体上所表达的寓意：你对现实的感知程度远比你想象中的，更加稀少也更加有限。（电影中的一致性错误）

Paul Bloom 教授：两项后续行动
昨天的——对不起，周一的讲座。
一是有人下课后问
对您自己的语言的偏好出现在发展和
幸运的是，研究几乎完全正确
这种婴儿的理解。
她知道答案。有研究在看
新生婴儿几乎在他们出生的那一刻就发现了这一点
他们偏爱自己的语言而不是其他语言
语言——优于其他语言。这表明他们是
在子宫内，在子宫内时，
适应他们的语言节奏并发展
对它的偏好。第二个问题是，
我非常简短地谈到了一个法庭案件，其中该人
是——在别人用枪指着的时候说的
对着警察，“让他来吧！”
一名警察被杀。而那个人被指控
谋杀，但我承认我实际上并不知道事情是如何发生的
事实证明，并且很友好地进行了广泛的研究。
好吧，他去了维基百科[笑声]
找到了答案。答案是他受过审判
被判犯有谋杀罪。随后他被
赦免。事实上，他被赦免了
1988年，这真的很好，除了他在1957年被处决。
但他们把它拍成了电影。所以，这是一部电影。
好的。所以，我今天想做，
对于讲座的第一部分，是继续
语言讲座，然后转向感知，
注意力和记忆力。而我们所说的
是——我们首先谈到了语言的普遍性，
然后转到有关不同方面的一些细节
语言包括音韵学、形态学和句法。
我们讨论了语言做惊人事情的方式
它确实如此，包括语言使用了任意
科学或声音来传达概念，
并且语言利用了一个组合系统，包括
递归将这些符号组合成一个虚拟的
无限组有意义的句子。
然后我们讨论了开发并做了一些
关于发展时间过程的评论——谈论
语言从婴儿到婴儿所在的地方的出现
真的很擅长学习语言给你谁不是，
谁的大脑萎缩了，谁的语言能力
死的。最后的问题是转移到
动物。现在我们知道了一些事情
关于语言，然后我们可以问做动物
使用——拥有同一种语言？
如果没有，他们能学会吗？现在完全没有
完全怀疑非人类动物具有交流能力
系统。这是众所周知的
不是一个有争议的问题。如果你想使用这个词
“语言”的意思是“交流”，然后是答案
显然是“是”。狗、蜜蜂和猴子都有
语。如果你想使用语言
尽管在更技术性的、狭义的意义上
具有我们之前讨论过的特性，
使用英语和 ASL 和西班牙语等作为我们的
背景，答案几乎肯定是“不”。
动物交流系统属于三种之一
类别。要么有一个有限列表
叫声，例如黑长尾猴，
有一个小的调用列表来传达不同的警告，比如
“蛇的攻击”或“豹的攻击”。
有一个连续的模拟信号。
例如，蜜蜂舞
以这种方式工作。蜜蜂舞蹈传达了
食物来源的位置，但不做任何事情
句法结构的方式。而是，强度
舞蹈对应食物来源的丰富性。
然后，您会得到诸如主题的随机变化之类的东西
作为鸟鸣。但是你在任何地方都找不到
真正意义上的是音韵学、形态学、句法，
组合系统或任意名称。
现在，这并不是特别有争议的。
不过肯定会有很多争议。
这是关于非人类通信系统的总结。
当我们谈到著名的案例时，它会变得更有争议
由人类训练的灵长类动物，例如 Kanzi，
Nim Chimpsky 和其他著名的灵长类动物
您可能已经在探索频道和其他频道看到
场地。这是相当
有争议的。如果你读过格雷教科书，
虽然里面没有什么特别不准确的地方，
我觉得格雷其实有点太轻信了，
过于相信关于
动物的能力。许多科学家争辩说，
例如，像 Kanzi 这样的动物，
就算可以说完全是在学单词，
学的很少。这需要他们广泛
多年的学习培训，不同于正常发展的
一天能学一个字，一小时能学一个字的孩子。
话语通常有顺序，但这种顺序往往非常
有限且缺乏递归属性。
而事实上，缺乏递归并不是
有争议的。最后，以下言论
黑猩猩——受过训练的黑猩猩非常重复，那又怎样
你经常在电视和纪录片中看到
采样。并且抽样通常可以是
非常令人印象深刻，但如果你只是随意听他们说的话
往往看起来像这样。这是典型的黑猩猩
随意的话语：“尼姆吃，尼姆吃。
喝，吃，我尼姆。我口香糖，我口香糖。
逗我玩，尼姆玩。我吃，我吃。
我香蕉，你香蕉，我你给。
香蕉我，我吃。给橙子，
我给，吃橙子，我吃橙子。”
Lila Gleitman 曾经评论说，如果任何正常发育
孩子这样说话，他爸妈会催他
向神经科医生尖叫。有一个更广泛的问题
在这里，也就是，“为什么我们会期望一个
黑猩猩学习人类语言？”
我们通常不期望一个物种具有这种能力
与另一个物种有关。所以，蝙蝠使用回声定位
四处走动，一些鸟儿在星星的指引下航行，
但是没有一个活跃的研究项目来看看猫是否
可以使用回声定位，或者狗可以通过星星导航。
我认为你可能会想的一个原因，
“当然，黑猩猩必须能够学习语言”是
因为你可能会被一些坏主意所困扰
关于语言。所以，一个想法是你可能会说，
“看。黑猩猩应该使用语言
因为黑猩猩太聪明了。”但对此的回应是，
“他们很聪明，但我们知道只有聪明是不够的。”
我们知道人类的语言能力并不完全是一种
聪明的结果。有聪明的孩子，
由于他们的语言能力有一些缺陷，
不要说或理解一种语言。
所以，黑猩猩的聪明本身并不
证明他们应该能够学习语言。
你也可能正确地指出黑猩猩是我们的
最近的进化亲属，这是正确的，
所以你——从表面上看——它不是
期望我们分享很多能力是不合理的
他们。另一方面，
我们很久以前就和他们分开了，显然人类是
不同于黑猩猩。还有五百万
无论哪种方式都需要数年时间，这对于一门语言来说已经足够了
进化的能力。现在，这些都不是说
非人类通信系统的研究不是
有趣的。来自我自己的——这是我的
我会在这里提出个人意见。
从我个人的观点来看，对这些尝试的研究
试着教黑猩猩、长臂猿或大猩猩，
像 ASL 这样的人类语言被误导了。
就好像一群猴子绑架了一个人类的孩子
并试图训练他如何像猴子一样叫。
它可能很有趣，但它似乎没有给我们任何
丰富的见解。我认为更多
有趣的是对这些动物交流的研究
野外系统。有一种人类语言学
描述了所有基础原则的语言
人类语言。它会非常
有趣的尝试相同的语言程序到另一个
在野外使用的通信系统，例如呼喊
长尾猴和蜜蜂跳舞。所以，这带来了部分
语言结束，但我想告诉你一些我们的事情
没谈。问题之一
Intro Psych 课程是我们必须快速完成很多主题
非常快。所以，如果你要采取
直接专注于您可能会学习的语言的课程，
例如，更多关于语言的
大脑，教科书上很简单地触及了一些东西，但是
与大量文献相关的东西。
类似地，与此相关的是语言障碍，
失语症等障碍和特定语言障碍
障碍和阅读障碍。有语言学习
感知和生产。我们如何做到这一点
理解和生成单词的惊人壮举
几分之一秒？那能力从何而来
从？有读书学习
这在很多方面都不同于研究一个
语。还记得达尔文描述的
语言作为一种本能。他仔细分辨
来自其他对我们来说不自然的事情，包括
阅读。而事实上，
阅读很难。阅读是一种文化
发明，不是每个人都拥有。
与语言不同，阅读是通过
多年来的巨大困难。
另一方面，阅读显然与
语。这是一种新的传达方式
语言，从口语到写作。
因此阅读的心理学和神经科学是
很有意思。有双语和
多种语言。人们在这方面的问题
房间通常会感兴趣，这有关系吗
无论您是在学习一种语言还是学习语言，您的学习效果如何
两个或三个或四个。多语种是怎么回事
在一个大脑中编码所有这些不同的语言？
等等。最后，一个非常热门的问题是
语言和思想之间的关系，我
实际上——几年前我教了一个完整的研讨会，叫做
《语言与思想》正是致力于这个问题。
这是一个很酷的问题，它可以分为两个非常
一般的问题。一是，“语言是否必要
抽象思维？”这是回答这个问题的一种方式
问题是看看像婴儿这样没有语言的生物
黑猩猩，看看它们有多聪明。
可能他们不是——他们很聪明，
在这种情况下，它会建议您不需要语言
抽象思维。另一方面，
可能是他们有一定的认知限制，
这表明语言对于
抽象思维。然后是相关的
问题。即使你知道一门语言，
你知道的语言的结构特性
影响你的思考方式？并且声称该语言
你知道影响你的想法有时被描述为
语言相对论或 Sapir-Whorf 假设。
例如，有很多研究
查看使用不同语言的人，例如英语与
韩国，看看这些是否存在结构性差异
语言会影响你的思考方式。现在，其中一些工作是
在阅读中讨论，这本书——格雷教科书，
以及《诺顿选集》中的选集。还有这个
弥补——再次，我已经向你展示了这个
星期一——你的阅读回复，你必须解决这个问题
问题并尽力回答。
你对语言有什么问题？
是的。学生：[听不清]
保罗·布鲁姆教授：提出了这个问题，
“有些人比其他人更容易学习语言，我们如何
解释一下？”答案是你可以问
关于第一语言学习的问题——所以
有些孩子学语言很快，
有些很慢——而且在第二语言方面也是如此
学习。你们中的一些人如沐春风
通过你在耶鲁大学的第二语言要求。
其他人正在挣扎和悲惨。
并且存在相当大的差异。
有一个爱因斯坦学得很慢的故事
语言，直到他四岁才开始说话。
事实上，他是一个——他说他的第一个
当他突然和他一起吃晚饭的时候的话
父母和他放下勺子说，
“汤太烫了。” 他的父母盯着
惊讶道：“你从来没有说过话。”
他说，“嗯，到目前为止，一切都
很好。”[笑声]
这不是一个真实的故事。[笑声]
为什么以及这些差异来自哪里的问题，
没有人真正知道，这出奇地难。
作为女性有一点优势。
女孩的语言比男孩稍微先进
但这不是一个大的，你需要一百个人才能
看统计。有很大的遗传因素。
如果你的父母很快学会了语言并且学会了
其他语言很快，你更有可能。
但了解这些差异的大脑基础
或者认知基础或社会基础是公正的——主要是
一个开放的问题。是的。
学生：当父母 [听不清]
保罗布鲁姆教授：这实际上更常态
世界各地的情况比美国的情况
孩子们接触单一语言的地方。
发生的事情是孩子们学习两种语言。
孩子很好，大人也一样，
根据不同的语言区分不同的语言
音响系统和他们的节奏，所以他们通常不会混淆
他们。然后他们只会学到更多
比一种语言。这实际上更多的是
世界各地的平均状况。
是的。学生：你说
惯用右手的人学习语言 [听不清]
Paul Bloom 教授：问题是关于
语言的半球专业化。
而且我实际上没有比我说的更多要说的
之前，我同意这是非常不令人满意的。
如果你是右撇子，语言可能在
你大脑的左侧。这里有多少人
左撇子？对于你，我们不知道。
它因人而异。有些人把它放在左边
边。你们中的一些人在
右边。对你们中的一些人来说
扩散。现在，这是为什么？
事实上，为什么有些人
右手和其他人首先是左撇子？
这些都是很好的问题。是的。
学生：[听不清] Paul Bloom 教授：
是的。我会——是的，就是——我会回答
那个问题。不幸的是，
这将是最后一个，然后我会去视觉。
问题是，“学习不止一个
语言使你学习它们比只学习一个更慢
语言？”这是有道理的
它会。数量有限
心理资源。如果我只是学英语
我将所有这些都用于英语。如果我正在学习英语并且
西班牙语我有点要分开了。你会期望他们是
每个都学得更慢。这是惊喜之一
语言发展的研究
常识性的观点似乎并不正确。
学习不止一种语言的孩子似乎没有任何缺陷
相对——在他们的每种语言中，相对于一个孩子
只学习一种语言。换句话说，
如果我只是在学英语 而我还是个孩子 而你
学习英语和西班牙语，你还是个孩子，
你会和我一样达到英语的里程碑。
您对西班牙语的额外学习似乎不会影响您。
学习多个似乎没有任何损害
语言。出现的另一个问题
是，“有任何认知缺陷吗？”
换句话说，有些人认为
学习多种语言有时会伤害孩子
某些方式。这是一个一直以来的主张
例如，魁北克制造，
关于应该如何教育孩子的辩论
英语和法语。它似乎不是
案件。似乎有，
据我们所知，学习很多没有不利的一面
年轻时的语言。这是否回答你的问题？
我现在想转到今天将带我们完成的主题
到下周初——感知，
注意力和记忆力。我把它们放在一起
而不是将它们视为单独的讲座，因为
从某种意义上说，它们是同一个故事。
你看到一个场景。你看到这一幕，你
看着它，你正在感知它。
它通过你的眼睛出现 你正在解释它
你看到了一些东西。你看到一个人，你看到一个
房子。如果你闭上眼睛，
你仍然可以把那个场景留在记忆中。
一周后，如果我要问你这个，
“那是什么季节？” 你会做得很好。
这就是我想谈论的故事——我们如何做到这一点。
在此过程中，我想提出一系列声明
就是这样。对于感知，
我想先说服你感知难的问题
成功的认知涉及受过教育的和
对世界的无意识猜测。
为了引起注意，我想建议我们
关注一些事情而不是其他事情，我们错过了一个令人惊讶的
世界上发生的事情的数量。
对于内存，内存有很多种。
记忆的关键是组织和理解。
你不能相信你的一些记忆。
有多少人记得你在 9/11 时在哪里？
你们很多人都错了。我永远不会
说服你这一点，因为你有某些记忆。
你可以讲这个故事。每个人都可以讲故事
当塔倒塌时他们在哪里。
但聪明的心理学家在 9 月 12 日说，
“我们做个研究吧。” 他们问人们，
“你昨天听到这个消息时在哪里？”
他们告诉了他们。然后他们回到他们身边
后来，一年后，两年后，
然后说，“告诉我 9 月 11 日发生的事情。”
他们说，“我完全记得我在哪里
曾是。我有一个非常——”然后——然后
这个故事常常是错误的。有很多这样的
我们要谈。然后最大的道德——所以，
我把它写得非常非常大——我们是
我们的经历常常是错误的，无论是现在
和现在。所以，让我们从感知开始。
有一个故事——我去麻省理工学院读研究生，然后
有一个关于马文·明斯基的故事，他是人工智能
大师。他——如果你听说过
词——“人工智能”这个词，就是他。
如果你听说人们只不过是
肉做的机器——还有他。嗯，有一个故事，他
正在做机器人方面的工作，他有兴趣建立一个
可以像机器人一样做各种很酷的事情的机器人。
故事讲到机器人不得不在——不得不写——有
去看世界。它必须能够拿起
事物并识别人并查看椅子并导航
明斯基说：“这是一个棘手的问题。
研究生要花一整个夏天才能弄清楚
出来。”然后他把它分配给一个
暑期项目的研究生。
视觉心理学家、感知心理学家、
喜欢那个故事，因为对计算机视觉的研究和
机器人视觉和尝试制造可以
识别和识别物体一直是一个深刻的失败。
在这一点上，地球上没有任何机器可以
在一个真正的层次上认识人、物和事物
愚蠢的一岁。原因是它是
一个比任何人想象的都要困难得多的问题。
那么，是什么使它成为如此困难的问题？
好吧，您可能认为这是一个简单的问题的一个原因是
你说，“好吧。我们必须弄清楚
人们如何看待的问题。好吧，这就是我们要做的。”
你在——你在那边，这是你的眼睛。
不知何故，它必须到达这个电视监视器，然后
你看它，这将解决你如何看待的问题。
所以，有时人们会说，“嘿。我听到眼睛翻转事物
上下翻转。我猜这个人会
必须习惯颠倒看事物。
这是一个有趣的问题。”不。
那不是看待它的方式，因为那没有答案
任何问题。这只是推动了这个问题
背部。美好的。
“他”怎么看？我们什么都不回答。
同样，虽然终结者的世界观
可能对应那个，那不能解决任何问题
他实际上是如何看待的。所以，他有所有这些数字
在那里射击。嗯，他必须阅读
数字。他必须看到这一点。
这是我的 iTunes。[笑声] 那是不经意的。
这是思考感知的正确方法。
你有一只非常丑陋和血腥的眼睛，
然后在这里你有视网膜。
视网膜是一堆神经细胞。
并且神经细胞激发——为了一些刺激而不是
其他。从这一系列的射击中，
“开火……不开火……开火……不开火，”你有
弄清楚世界是什么。所以，更好的观点是这样的。
神经元的放电可以被视为一系列
数字。你必须弄清楚如何
从数字到物体和人，再到行动和
事件。这就是问题所在。
这是一个特别困难的问题，因为
视网膜是一个二维表面，你必须推断一个
二维表面的 3D 世界。
这是，从数学的角度来看
看来，不可能。这意味着
那里——对于任何二维图像都有一个不定的
与其对应的三维图像的数量。
例如，假设你有这个
视网膜，一个形状像这样的光阵列。
那对应于世界上的什么？
嗯，它可以对应于你这样的事情
寻找或它可能对应于一个正方形
向后倾斜。所以，你必须弄清楚
哪个是哪个。而我们解决这个问题的方式
问题是我们有无意识的假设
世界是如何运作的。我们的头脑中包含着某些
关于事情应该如何的假设，使我们能够做出
从二维数组到有根据的猜测
三维世界。我故意没有做
提前为这门课提供的幻灯片，因为我
不想让人作弊，但有几点
在那里您可以查看幻灯片并确认
我要告诉你的事情实际上是真的。
我想给你举三个例子。
一是颜色。我要在这里混为一谈
颜色和亮度。另一个是对象。
另一个是深度。第一，颜色问题。
你如何区分一块煤和一个雪球？
嗯，那是一块煤，那是一个雪球，
它来自谷歌图片。你怎么知道哪个是哪个？
嗯，你说的一块煤是黑色的，一个雪球是白色的。
你怎么知道？好吧，也许你有你的
视网膜——你的视网膜会对撞击它的某种颜色做出反应。
它过于简单化了，但让我们假设这是
真的。所以，这是黑色出来的
那是白色的，这就是你所说的。
但事实上，这不可能是对的。
它不可能是正确的，因为物体的颜色不仅仅是一种
它们由什么材料制成，但与数量有关
击中它的光。所以，当我走过舞台
我坠入影与光之中，你们谁也不叫喊，
“布鲁姆教授变色了！”
相反，您会自动排除
照明，因为这正在发生。
这实际上可能非常惊人。
所以，你在这里看到这个显示。
看看这两个块。我认为你把这个当成
比那个轻。你做。
你可能会想象这是因为这个条带更轻
比这但它不是。他们是一样的。
你不会相信我，直到你真的把它打印出来
看一看，但它们实际上是一样的。
我给你看。你可以说我在欺骗
你，但这就是它的工作方式。
有特写。所以，记住我们在比较
这个和这个。现在，让我们带走其他
环境的一部分，你会发现它们是一样的。
现在你说，“但是坚持下去。这不能和这个一样”
但答案是——就是这样。
我们知道阴影会使表面变暗。
我们不知道这就像“这是我知道的事情”。
相反，我们知道这一点，因为它已在我们的大脑中连接起来。
所以当我们在阴影中看到一个表面时，我们会自动假设
它比看起来更轻，我们认为它更轻。
您可以通过删除阴影的提示来显示这一点。
你会看到它的真实面貌。这是一个插图
你眼中的信息如何只是一点点信息；
来自单个光源的光度是一位
您用于计算某些假设的信息
并得出结论。这里有一种不同的
例如：对象。你看到这个，你
自动直观地将其分割为不同的
对象。你把它分成一个男人和一个
房子、鸟和树。你怎么做到这一点？
事实证明，对计算机进行编程以
将场景分割成不同的对象是非常困难的
我们如何做的问题在某种程度上是未知的。
但是这个问题的一个答案是在
环境是您正在处理的信号
不同的对象。而这些线索往往
被描述为格式塔原则。因此，一个例子是“接近”。
当你看到彼此靠近的事物时，
你更有可能认为他们属于
一样。有“相似之处”。
该显示可能对应于无限数量的
对象，但您自然倾向于将其视为两个。
你用一种纹理图案做一个，另一个用
其他纹理图案。“关闭。”
这是一个封闭的正方形的事实表明它是一个
单个对象。“好的延续。”
如果你必须判断，这也可能是两个
形状，一个从 A 到 C，另一个从
D 到 B。但你往往看不到它
那样。相反，您倾向于将其视为
一个从A运行到B，另一个从C运行
对 D.“共同运动”。
如果事物一起移动，它们就是一个单一的对象。
和“好形式”。你看到那边的物体。
在没有任何其他信息的情况下，您可能
很想说这是一件事，也许是一个加号。
这个，因为它的形式很糟糕，你更想说
这是两件事，每一件事上面放着一件事
其他。这些是那种暗示，
期望; 他们都不对。
在某些情况下，他们都可以愚弄你。
但这些都是有用的线索，可以指导我们对
世界，我们将世界分割成不同的对象。
在这里总结了它们。这是一个案例，他们
骗你 。所以你可能会想，
如果你有意见，这里有一个三角形。
在这种情况下，某些线索会驱使您
认为这里有一个三角形。
然而，这里没有三角形。
如果你在这里掩盖这些小吃豆子，三角形就会消失
离开。同样，没有正方形
在中间 。没有正方形。
这是非常矩阵。而这些都是幻觉，因为
这些暗示那里应该有一个正方形，
形式的规律性。最后是“深度”。
你看到这个，你没有——你在一个平面上看到它是一个公寓
事物。你向内看的另一个层面
这张照片，你会看到，例如，
这个人在房子前面。
你看着我，你看到了领奖台。
如果你有严重的神经系统疾病，你会看到
这个奇怪的生物半领奖台通向一个
胸部和头部 – 他的顶部是
摇摆不定，领奖台一动不动。
如果你的神经系统正常，你会看到一个人走路
在讲台后面来回走动。你是怎样做的？
嗯，这真的是一个问题，因为，我可以给你一个
视觉困难的技术原因，
但粗略地说，你得到了一个二维
视网膜，你必须弄清楚一个三维世界。
你怎么做呢？答案再次是
假设或线索。有一定的假设
视觉系统使这并不总是正确的，事实上，
在视觉错觉的情况下，可能是错误的，但会指导你
以正确和准确的方式感知世界。
例如，存在双眼视差。
这实际上是一种有趣的方式。
这是唯一涉及两只眼睛的深度线索。
如果我近距离看你，我得到的图像和
我在这里得到的图像有些不同——或者我必须
将我的眼睛集中在一起以获得相同的图像。
如果我从背后看你，它们几乎一模一样
因为越远，鉴于两只眼睛
静态，图像看起来越近。
这不是，再一次，你说
你自己，“哦。在那里有一个橙子。
我的右眼和左眼的图像是一样的。
你一定离得很远。”而是不知不觉地
你会自动估计人们的距离
深度基于双眼视差。
有“插入”。你怎么知道我在前面
领奖台和领奖台不在我面前？
不 你怎么知道领奖台在
我的面前？嗯，从我站的地方
这是正确的。你怎么知道领奖台是
在我前面？嗯，因为我正走在这里
然后它切入我。除非我正在经历
怪诞的变形，正在发生的事情是
感觉说我在讲台后面移动。
插入。你带走那个人。
你怎么知道那个人站在房子前面？
嗯，因为有——你看到了他的所有人，他正在阻止一个
很多房子。有相对大小。
我离我有多远？好吧，如果你看着我
你必须估计我离我有多远，你会这样做的一部分
弄清楚你知道一个人应该有多高。
如果你认为我有五十英尺高，你会认为我是
比我还远。所以，你对尺寸的判断
决定你对距离的判断。
通常，此提示不是必需的，但如果您查看
帝国大厦——如果你走进一片田野，你会看到一座塔
你看，你对多远的判断
塔的高度取决于你对塔有多高的了解
塔应该。如果它这么高，你会说，“哦。
一定是——”然后你会很惊讶。
有纹理渐变，我稍后会解释，
和线性透视，我也会在
第二。纹理渐变是这样的。
记住我们之前遇到的问题。
你怎么知道那个东西是这个物体还是里面的物体？
和它自己？嗯，答案是
纹理会显示自己，因为纹理会得到
从远处看更小。现在，从逻辑上讲，
这可能仍然是一件直立的事情
点越来越小。但自然的假设是
点以这种常规方式后退的原因是
因为它在深度后退。经典错觉——
穆勒-莱尔错觉。人们会看到这更长的时间
比这个 。不是。
如果你不相信我，打印出来并测量它。
与庞佐错觉有关，人们又一次看到了这个
因为——当你发现时，你会得到以你命名的错觉
这些——这个比这个长。
再次，它不是。这里发生了什么？
好吧，顶线看起来更长，即使它不是。
对原因的一种解释是，场景中的这些其他台词
让你的视觉系统猜测距离。
然后你通过假设来修正距离
关于尺寸。如果你有两条线——你会
get–我们稍后会详细介绍，但是如果您有两个
线条，它们在你的视网膜上占据相同的空间，
但你相信一个在 100 英尺远而另一个在 50 英尺外
英尺远，你会看到 100 英尺远的那个更大
因为你的大脑会说，“好吧，如果它只占用这个
很大的空间，但它更远，它必须大于
一些更接近并占据那么多空间的东西。”
这就是这里发生的事情。对于顶线，
对于 Mueller-Lyer 错觉，我们假设这更进一步
远离，根据距离的线索，这更接近。
并且提示被考虑在内。因为我们假设这
更远，我们假设它必须更大
占用与这个相同的空间，它更接近。
庞佐错觉也是如此。
有线性透视。平行线趋于后退
在距离。如果这个顶部离得更远
比这个但它们在你眼中占据相同的大小，
这个一定更大，你认为它更大。
这本书提供了更多关于这些幻觉如何
工作。我将以一个结束
我什至不想费心解释的错觉。
我只是给你看，因为你应该可以，
基于对这些其他幻想的思考，
想办法。它是由罗杰开发的
谢泼德。嗯，你知道的。
它们被称为 Shepard 表。
关于它的事情是，这些看起来像两张桌子。
如果你问人们——你不会根据这里的一个
视觉感知讲座。你问人，
“这些桌子中哪一个更容易通过门，如果
你的门很薄吗？”人们会说门上的那个
左边。这个看起来有点厚
而且更难通过。这个看起来更长更
更瘦。事实上，它们的大小相同。
我的意思是这和这个完全一样
. 现在，我要证明给
你通过向你展示一些吸引我的东西——在电脑上
我花了大约七个小时才完成。
没有人会相信，因为我可以伪造
它。但如果你愿意，
打印出来自己做。
你只要拿一张纸，把它放在这里。
然后你移动它和一样。我把它展示给别人看
他们称我为骗子。无论如何，你可以做到
自己在家中或书房的私密空间。
但我真正想让你做的事是说，
“好的。
为什么这个比这个看起来更长更瘦？”
答案是相同的答案，将解释
穆勒-莱尔错觉和庞佐错觉，
与深度线索和你的思维纠正方式有关
深度的感知。这就是我要说的
这一点关于感知。我现在想转移注意力
和记忆，我要治疗注意力和记忆
一起。我们对记忆着迷
而且，特别是，它特别有趣
当记忆出错时。特别迷人
失忆症会发生什么。
例如，我需要一个志愿者
愿意做一点点表演，一点点，
难以置信的一点点。优秀的。
好的。那么好吧，你就呆在那里。
所以假装你有健忘症。好的？
你叫什么名字？学生：我不知道。
保罗·布鲁姆教授：完美。
我真的很高兴你这么说。这是错误的答案，因为
你没有完全健忘症。你还记得英语。
好的。它非常聪明。
好的。所以你不可能失去所有
你的回忆。你有英语。
你——所以我们会做你的。你叫什么名字？
哦。他看起来很困惑，但他仍然
保持肠道和膀胱控制，所以他没有忘记
一切。[笑声]
现在，我总是失去那个演示中的第三位志愿者。
所以，我想说的是，记忆是一个非常广泛的
概念。它包括自传
记忆，这是我们通常认为的。
这是一个完全理性的回应。
当我说有人失去记忆时，
“哦。我有一部关于某人的电影
失去他们的记忆，”你不会想象一个穿着尿布的人。
你想象那个人走来走去，与酷酷的发生性关系
人们说，“我在哪里？”
[笑声] 所以你想象的就是你
想象他们失去了自传体的记忆，
他们的自我意识。但是当然，
懂英语是你记忆的一部分，知道如何站立
知道如何咀嚼和吞咽是一切
你已经学会了，你已经——那已经
经验塑造。还有一个区别
关于健忘症的问题，
大致上有两种类型的健忘症。
他们经常一起跑，但一种健忘症就是你
失去对过去的记忆。另一种类型的健忘症——那就是
马特达蒙健忘症。另一种类型的健忘症
是你失去了形成新记忆的能力。
这是一部关于一个有这个问题的人的电影。
他是世界著名的合唱团导演，他遭受了病毒
导致脑损伤的脑炎破坏了大部分
他的颞叶，他的海马体，
和他的左额叶很多。
可能是——可能会更糟，因为他保留了
说话的能力。他似乎是——他不是
智障。他就是无法形成新的记忆
所以他生活在这个永恒的“现在”中
没有什么影响他，他觉得——这并不总是
发生了。这些不止一种
情况并不总是这样，
但他感觉每时每刻都在不断重生。
我们将回到这一点，然后询问这里发生了什么。
但这里有几个主题。我想，在进入之前
关于内存的细节，我想回顾一些基本的
当我们谈论记忆时，记忆的区别。
粗略地说，你可以区分感官
记忆，短期记忆，也称为工作
记忆力和长期记忆力。感官记忆是残渣
你的感官。有一道闪电。
您可能会看到残像。那个残影是你的感官
记忆。有点长
声音的回声记忆。所以当有人正在和
即使你不注意你也会储存一些
他们所说的几秒钟，有时是，
当有人和你说话而你没有听他们说话时
他们说，“你没有在听我说话。”
然后你说，“不。你说的是——”然后
从回声记忆中提取最后几秒钟。
有短期记忆。有谁记得我刚才说的
说？如果你这样做了，那是短期的
记忆——持续几分钟。然后是长期的
记忆。有人知道埃尔维斯是谁吗？
你知道你的名字吗？你知道你住在哪里吗？
您随身携带的长期记忆库
你不会马上就输。
当我们想到电影意义上的健忘症时，
我们认为与以下相关的长期记忆的某种丧失
自传式个人事件。
隐式和显式有区别，
我们将更详细地讨论它。
但是明确的，粗略的，就是你所拥有的
有意识地访问。那么，你晚餐吃了什么
昨夜。你可以回想一下说，
“我昨晚晚餐吃了这个。”
内隐是更无意识的。
这个词是什么——某个词是什么——“有”这个词是什么意思，
怎么走路，怎么骑自行车，
你可能无法表达，甚至可能不会
意识到但仍然可以访问。
语义记忆和情节记忆是有区别的
记忆。语义记忆基本上是
事实，一个词是什么意思，加拿大的首都是什么，
等等。情节是自传，
是发生在你身上的事情。耶鲁在纽黑文是
语义。你去度假了
上周来自纽黑文，这将是插曲式的。
有编码存储和检索，指的是
记忆中发生的事情的不同层次。
编码是获取记忆，就像你为考试而学习一样
或者你有经验。和存储保持
记忆。和检索正在得到
内存不足。最后，检索通常是
方便地分解为回忆与识别，
回忆是当你把它从记忆中拉出来的时候
识别是当您识别出对应的内容时
过去的事情。有谁记得领带是什么颜色的
我前两天吃的？哦。
好的。嗯，那是不可能的
记住，但如果我问你，“它是紫色的还是橙色的？”
那会容易得多。[笑声]
现在，你可以粗略地把记忆分解成
阶段。所以你开始感觉
记忆只是导致短期的东西
记忆，导致长期记忆。
这个阶段理论是我们将要讨论的
更多详情。但这将我们引向了这个问题
的关注。你如何从你的记忆中获得记忆
感觉，从你听到的？
我在和你说话。你在听我说话
它是如何进入其他系统的？
什么决定了记住什么，不记住什么？
现在有各种各样的事情发生在你身上。
你的椅子的座位压在你的屁股上。
你不会说，“哦。我想永远记住这一点。
座位压在我的屁股上。”
[笑声] 你的邻居正在散发着
某种气味。你在想什么。
你的眼睛跟着他。不是所有的东西都在内存中。
如果你试图记住一切，你会发疯的。
你不能。那么，什么决定了得到什么
进入记忆？嗯，一个答案是“注意
是。”而注意力是——可能是
粗略地视为手电筒，体验的聚光灯
心甘情愿地放大某事并使其令人难忘。
注意具有某些特性。
有些东西来自注意力——到注意力
毫不费力和自动。这是一个例子。
您将在这里看到一系列字母。
其中之一将是绿色的。当你看到绿色的
请鼓掌。[笑声]
不，不是这个绿色的。[笑声]
将有另一张幻灯片。
好的。你现在准备好了。
但会有一个“o”。一看到就鼓掌。
好的。有时这是工作。
找到红色的“o”。[笑声] 更难了。
有时注意力是不自觉的。
我需要一个志愿者。而我想做的就是我想要
在屏幕上向您显示颜色，我希望您命名
出来时的颜色。
你想要这个吗？学生1：我
色盲。保罗·布鲁姆教授：哦。
[笑声] 第一个很容易。
看。这是——你必须走
放下颜色。有人吗？
好的。学生 2：红色，
绿色、蓝色、黑色、绿色、
蓝色，红色，蓝色，黑色，红色。
保罗·布鲁姆教授：非常好。
[掌声]好的。现在这些。
这些将是文字，但只是名字——好吧，你。
只需命名颜色。学生 3：绿色，
红、蓝、黑、蓝、红、绿、
黑色，红色，蓝色。保罗·布鲁姆教授：
完美的。现在，我们会回到你身边，
同样的交易，话。学生 4：红色，
蓝色，绿色——保罗·布鲁姆教授：不，
不，不。嗯嗯。
不要——我知道你可以阅读。颜色。
学生4：好的。对不起。
好的。蓝绿，
红、绿、黑、绿、蓝、
黑色，红色，Paul Bloom 教授：实际上非常好。
[笑声] 这就是所谓的 Stroop
影响。作为专业的读者，
就像你一样，你的阅读知识，你对什么的关注
这句话的意思，颠覆了你想做的事
任务。你不能让它消失
即使你想。如果有人给你 1,000 美元
像你读这个一样快读这个，和你读一样快
这个，你做不到。你不能阻止它。
有一些工作——有一些有趣的发现
关于注意力。我这里有演示。
我希望人们实际上–这很重要–你们中的一些人可能有
以前看过这个。对你来说很重要
整个过程都很安静。你将看到的是
你会看到两支篮球队。
其中之一将有白色T恤。
另一件将有黑色T恤。
他们会来回传球。
我想让你做的就是在你的脑海中数出多少
传球白队传球。
[笑声]人们得到了什么数字？
好的。有没有人注意到什么
异常？[笑声]
没有人注意到任何异常吗？
好的。有些人没有注意到
任何异常。什么都没看到的人
不寻常，再看一遍，就看吧。
[笑声] 大约50%的人当
数数，以前从未见过的人不会注意到
任何事物。但是当你不在的时候
数数很明显你错过了什么。
[笑声] 这是一个示范
在许多事实中，当你在做某事时
你的注意力窗口很小，你失去了注意力
在其他事情上。这是另一个不同的
例子。我希望人们观看
电影并密切关注发生在
电影并尝试记住这一点。有多少人注意到
那部电影里有什么奇怪的东西？你们有多少人没有？
好的。现在大家看看
围巾，盘子和食物的颜色，
除其他事项外。现象，
一般而言，一直被称为“变化盲目”。
我们往往是这样的——当有一个焦点时
注意力以某种方式集中，
我们往往会忽略发生在
环境。很多时候是，
事实上，当场景发生变化时，很难
注意什么变化，什么保持不变。
所以，在这个最终的演示中，只有两个
图片闪烁。看到的时候可以鼓掌吗
两张图有什么不同？
[鼓掌] [笑声]
我自己在这些方面很糟糕，所以我很同情。
有多少人没见过？
[笑声] 好。这是非常令人印象深刻的。
[笑声] 再来一次不一样的
一。
[鼓掌] 有人没看到吗？
说实话。我再给你试试。
[掌声]好的。我会让你摆脱痛苦。
[笑声] 这是丹·西蒙斯和
这是一个非常有趣的工作的一部分
所谓的“变化盲目”。
这意味着，现象是，
我们关注的焦点非常狭窄，可以发生巨大的变化
发生我们不知道的事情。这就是为什么，
在电影中，有太多——太多的困难
连续性变化。丹·西蒙斯也因
在一些经典中将其带出实验室
实验，我试图得到对应的电影
他们。他所做的是他所做的
在他所在的康奈尔校区进行的这项伟大的研究–在哪里
发生的事情是他们会让一些毫无戒心的人走路
穿过校园，有些人会过来说，
“对不起，先生。我迷路了。
你能帮我指路吗？”
有一张地图，然后那个人会说，
“当然。” 然后会有两个
建筑工人拿着一扇门。
这些家伙会在这两个人之间粗鲁地碰撞
字符然后实验者被切换
另一个人。所以现在，当这两个家伙
走开，对象站在那里，完全
不同的人。[笑声]
有趣的是没有人注意到。
[笑声] 他们会注意到这个人是否
改变性别。“你以前不是女人吗？”
[笑声] 他们注意到如果
实验者改变种族，但大多数其他改变他们
无视。还有一个实验。
我认为 Brian Scholl 做了这个，但它可能是 Dan
Simons 发生的事情是一个主题进入实验室。
他们说，“如果你要和我们做一个实验，
你需要在人类主体表格上签字。”
把表格递给他，实验者。
主题在表格上签名。实验者采取形式
并说：“谢谢。我把它放在这里。”
在这里下去，然后一个不同的人突然出现。
[笑声] 人们没有注意到。并且有一定的水平
我们无视变化。
奇怪的是我们看不到——我们不认为我们是。
我们认为我们看到的世界是真实的，而我们不知道——注意
当我们在做某事时；
其他一切都被屏蔽了。
所以大约 50% 的人从未看过这个演示
之前，大猩猩演示，他们没有注意到大猩猩。
还有——你无法想象有什么比这更明显的了。
大猩猩的研究实际上是在很久以前完成的。
它最初是以不同的方式完成的，但我会展示它
给你只是因为这是最初的研究，现在你
都知道会发生什么——哦，不是那个。
哎呀。不。
那实际上——如果你看那么快，
是现任耶鲁教授。哦。
我永远不会拿回我的 DVD。
不管怎样，我将在下周向您展示另一个演示。
我将会。[笑声]
此时对注意力和记忆力有任何疑问吗？
是的。学生：[听不清]
保罗·布鲁姆教授：是的。
为什么会这样？为什么–为什么要做这样的事情
变得非常熟练 变得不自觉和不自觉？
这是个好问题。我不知道。
我们知道他们这样做。我们知道，一旦你——你
一旦你知道如何阅读，就不能不阅读。
你也不能不听。如果我和你说话，我
非常无聊，但我正在和你说话，
很难不听。你不能关闭你的耳朵。
你可以把你的手指放进去，但你不能关掉
你的——你也不能不闭眼就闭上眼睛
他们。你不能说，
“这是一部恶心的电影。我不会去看的。”
[笑声] 所以，这不是在回答你的问题
问题。只是说你的
观察是正确的，也是更普遍的观察。
当你擅长某事并且过度练习时，
它变得不自觉，你无法阻止它。
好的。嗯——哦。
后面还有一个。是的。
学生：[听不清] Paul Bloom 教授：
现在怎么办？对不起。
在那边。是的。
学生：[音频不清晰] 就在他出事之前？
保罗布鲁姆教授：他记得以前的事情吗？
他的事故？是的。
他对事故前的事件有些健忘，但他确实做到了
记住事情。他知道他的名字，他知道
关于他生活的其他事情。好的。
我下周见。

Professor Paul Bloom: Two follow-ups on
yesterday’s–I’m sorry, on Monday’s lecture.
One is that somebody came up after class and asked when the
preference for your own language emerges in development and
fortunately, studies pretty much exactly
this sort of infant understanding.
She knew the answer. There’s been studies looking at
newborn babies finding that pretty much the moment they pop
out they favor their own language over other
language–over other languages. And this suggests that they are
listening while in utero, while in the womb,
to the rhythms of their language and developing a
preference for it. A second issue is,
I talked very briefly about a court case in which the person
was–said at a moment where someone else was pointing a gun
at a police officer, “Let him have it!”
and a police officer was killed. And that person was charged
with murder but I admitted I didn’t actually know how things
turned out and was kind enough to do extensive research.
Well, he went to Wikipedia and [laughter]
found out the answer. The answer is he was tried and
found guilty for murder. He was then subsequently
pardoned. In fact, he was pardoned in
1988, which is really nice except he was executed in 1957.
But they did it into a movie. So, it’s a movie.
Okay. So, I want to do today,
for the first part of the lecture, is continue the
language lecture and then move to perception,
attention, and memory. And what we had spoken about
was–We first talked about universals of language,
then moved to some detail about the different aspects of
language including phonology, morphology, and syntax.
We discussed the ways in which language does the amazing things
it does, including the fact that language has used arbitrary
science or sounds to convey concepts,
and that languages exploit a combinatorial system including
recursion to put together these symbols into a virtually
limitless set of meaningful sentences.
We then talked about development and made some
remarks about the developmental time course – talking about
the emergence of language from babies to – where babies are
really good at learning language to you who are not,
whose brains have atrophied, whose language capacities are
dead. Final issue is to shift to
animals. Now that we know something
about language, we could then ask do animals
use–possess the same sort of language?
And if not, can they learn it? Now, there is absolutely no
doubt at all that nonhuman animals possess communication
systems. This has been known forever and
is not a matter of controversy. And if you want to use the term
“language” to mean “communication,” then the answer
is obviously “yes.” Dogs and bees and monkeys have
language. If you want to use language
though in the more technical, narrow sense as anything that
has the properties that we discussed earlier,
using English and ASL and Spanish and so on as our
background, the answer’s almost certainly “no.”
Animal communication systems fall into sort of one of three
categories. Either there is a finite list
of calls, so vervet monkeys, for instance,
have a small list of calls to convey different warnings like
“attack from a snake” or “attack from a leopard.”
There is a continuous analog signal.
So, bee dance, for instance,
works on this way. Bee dance communicates the
location of food sources but doesn’t do it in any
syntactically structured way. Rather, the intensity of the
dance corresponds to the richness of the food source.
And then, you get things like random variation on a theme such
as birdsong. But what you don’t find in any
real sense is phonology, morphology, syntax,
combinatorial systems or arbitrary names.
Now, this much is not particularly controversial.
There gets to be a lot of controversy though.
This is the summary about nonhuman communication systems.
It gets more controversial when we get to famous cases of
primates trained by humans such as Kanzi,
Nim Chimpsky, and other famous primates that
you may well have seen on the Discovery channel and other
venues. And this is fairly
controversial. If you read the Gray textbook,
while nothing in it is particularly inaccurate,
I think Gray is actually a little bit too credulous,
too believing in the claims that have been made about the
abilities of the animals. So many scientists argue,
for instance, that animals like Kanzi,
even if they can be said to be learning words at all,
learn very few of them. And it takes them extensive
years of training to learn, unlike a normally developing
child who could learn a word in a day or a word in an hour.
The utterances often have order but this order tends to be very
limited and lacks the recursive properties.
And in fact, the lack of recursion is not
controversial. Finally, the utterances of
chimpanzees–trained chimpanzees are extremely repetitive so what
you often see on TV and in documentaries is sort of a
sampling. And the sampling could often be
very impressive but if you take just what they say at random it
tends to look like this. This is typical chimpanzee
utterances just taken at random: “Nim eat, Nim eat.
Drink, eat, me Nim. Me gum, me gum.
Tickle me, Nim play. Me eat, me eat.
Me banana, you banana, me you give.
Banana me, me eat. Give orange,
me give, eat orange, me eat orange.”
Lila Gleitman once commented that if any normally developing
child spoke like this, his parents would rush him
screaming to a neurologist. There’s a broader question
here, which is, “Why would we ever expect a
chimpanzee to learn a human language?”
We don’t normally expect one species to have the capacities
associated with another species. So, bats use echolocation to
get around and some birds navigate by the stars,
but there’s not an active research program seeing if cats
can use echolocation or dogs could navigate by the stars.
And I think one reason why you might be tempted to think,
“well, of course chimps must be able to learn language” is
because you might be caught in the grips of some bad ideas
about language. So, one idea is you might say,
“Look. Chimps should use language
because chimps are so smart.” But the response to this is,
“they are smart but we know that smart isn’t enough.”
We know that the human capacity for language is not totally a
result of smartness. There are smart children who,
due to some deficit in their language capacity,
don’t speak or understand a language.
So, the smartness of chimpanzees does not in itself
demonstrate that they should be able to learn language.
You might also point out correctly that chimps are our
nearest evolutionary relatives, which is right,
so you–one would expect on the face of it–it’s not
unreasonable to expect us to share a lot of abilities with
them. On the other hand,
we split from them a long time ago and plainly humans are
different from chimps. And there was five million
years either way and that’s more than enough time for a language
capacity to evolve. Now, none of this is to say
that the study of nonhuman communication systems isn’t
interesting. From my own–This is my
personal opinion I’ll raise here.
From my own opinion, the study of the attempts to
try to teach chimpanzees, or gibbons, or gorillas,
a human language like ASL are misguided.
It would be as if a team of monkeys kidnapped a human child
and tried to train him how to hoot like a monkey.
It might be enjoyable but it does not seem to give us any
rich insights. What I think is a lot more
interesting is the study of these animal communication
systems in the wild. There’s a linguistics of human
language that has delineated the principles that underlie all
human languages. It would be as extraordinarily
interesting to attempt the same linguistic program to the other
communication systems used in the wild such as the cries of
vervet monkeys and bee dance. So, this brings the section on
language to a close but I want to tell you a few things we
didn’t talk about. One of the problems with an
Intro Psych course is we have to whip through a lot of topics
very fast. So, if you were to take a
course that focused directly on language you might learn,
for instance, more about language in the
brain, something touched about very briefly in the textbook but
something that has a large literature associated with it.
Similarly, and related to this, there’s language disorders,
disorders like aphasias and disorders like specific language
impairment and dyslexia. There is the study of language
perception and production. How is it that we do this
amazing feat of understanding and producing words in a
fraction of a second? Where does that ability come
from? There is the study of reading
which is, in many ways, different from the study of a
language. Remember when Darwin described
language as an instinct. He carefully distinguished it
from other things that don’t come natural to us including
reading. And in fact,
reading is difficult. Reading is a cultural
invention, not every human has it.
And unlike language, reading is acquired with
tremendous difficulty over many years.
On the other hand, reading plainly intersects with
language. It’s a new way of conveying
language, moving out from speech to writing.
And the psychology and neuroscience of reading is thus
very interesting. There’s bilingualism and
multilingualism. The questions people in this
room typically are going to be interested in is does it matter
for how well you learn language whether you’re learning one or
two or three or four. How is it that a multilingual
encodes all these different languages inside a single brain?
And so on. Finally, a very hot issue is
that of the relationship between language and thought and I’m
actually–A few years ago I taught an entire seminar called
“Language and Thought” devoted to precisely this question.
And it’s a cool question and it could break up into two very
general questions. One is, “Is language necessary
for abstract thought?” And one way to answer that
question is to look at creatures without language like babies and
chimpanzees and see how smart they are.
It might be that they’re not–that they’re very smart,
in which case it would suggest you don’t need language for
abstract thought. On the other hand,
it might be that they have certain cognitive limitations,
which would suggest that language is essential for
abstract thought. Then there’s the related
question. Even once you know a language,
does the structural properties of the language that you know
affect the way you think? And the claim that the language
you know affects how you think is sometimes described as
linguistic relativity or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
So for instance, there’s a lot of research
looking at speakers of different languages such as English versus
Korean and seeing whether structural differences in these
languages affect how you think. Now, some of this work is
discussed in the readings, the book–the Gray textbook,
and the selections from The Norton Anthology. And this
makes up–again, I’ve showed this to you on
Monday–your reading response where you have to address this
question and take your best shot at answering it.
What are your questions about language?
Yes. Student: [inaudible]
Professor Paul Bloom: The question was raised,
“Some people learn languages easier than others and how do we
explain this?” And the answer is you could ask
the question both with regard to first language learning – so
some children learn language very quickly,
some are very slow – and also with regard to second language
learning. Some of you are breezing
through your second language requirement here at Yale.
Others are struggling and miserable.
And there’s considerable variation.
There’s the story of Einstein who was very slow to learn
language and didn’t speak at all until he was four.
And in fact, he was a–He said his first
words when all of a sudden he was having supper with his
parents and he put down the spoon and he said,
“The soup is too hot.” And his parents stared in
astonishment and said, “You’ve never spoken before.”
And he said, “Well, up to now everything’s
been fine.” [laughter]
It’s not a true story. [laughter]
The question of why and where these differences come from,
nobody really knows and it’s surprisingly hard.
There’s a slight advantage for being female.
Girls are slightly more advanced in language than boys
but it’s not a big one and you need a hundred people to just
see it statistically. There’s a big genetic factor.
If your parents learned language quickly and learned
other languages quickly, you are more likely to.
But an understanding of the brain bases of these differences
or the cognitive bases or the social bases is just–is largely
an open question. Yes.
Student: What happens when parents [inaudible]
Professor Paul Bloom: This is actually more the norm
around the world than the situation in the United States
where kids are exposed to a single language.
What happens is children learn both languages.
Children are very good, as adults are,
of distinguishing different languages on the basis of their
sound system and their rhythms so they don’t typically confuse
them. And then they just learn more
than one language. And that’s actually more the
average state of affairs around the world.
Yes. Student: You said that
people who are right-handed learn languages [inaudible]
Professor Paul Bloom: The question is about the
hemispheric specialization for language.
And I don’t have actually much more to say than what I said
before, which I agree is deeply unsatisfying.
If you’re right-handed, language is probably in the
left side of your brain. How many people here are
left-handed? For you we don’t know.
It varies. Some of you have it in the left
side. Some of you have it in the
right side. For some of you it’s kind of
diffuse. Now, why is this?
And in fact, why are some people
right-handed and others left-handed in the first place?
Those are really good questions. Yes.
Student: [inaudible] Professor Paul Bloom:
Yes. I’ll–Yes, that’s–I’ll answer
that question. And unfortunately,
it’s going to be the last one and then I’ll go to vision.
The question is, “Does learning more than one
language cause you to learn them slower than just learning one
language?” And it would stand to reason
that it would. There’s a finite amount of
mental resources. If I’m just learning English,
I use all of it for English. And if I’m learning English and
Spanish I kind of got to split. And you’d expect them to be
each learned slower. It’s one of the surprises of
the study of language development that that
common-sense view does not appear to be true.
Children learning more than one language seem to show no deficit
relative–in each of their languages, relative to a child
learning just one language. In other words,
if I am just learning English and I’m a kid and you’re
learning English and Spanish and you’re a kid,
you’ll reach the milestones in English the same time I will.
Your extra learning of Spanish doesn’t seem to affect you.
There doesn’t seem to be any detriment for learning multiple
languages. Another question which comes up
is, “Is there any cognitive deficit?”
In other words, some people have argued that
learning multiple languages sometimes harms children in
certain ways. This is a claim that’s been
made in Quebec, for instance,
over the debate over how children should be taught
English and French. It does not appear to be the
case. There appears to be,
as far as we know, no down side to learning many
languages when you’re young. Does that answer your question?
I want to move now to the topic that will take us through today
and through the beginning of next week – perception,
attention, and memory. And I’m putting them together
instead of treating them as separate lectures because
there’s a sense in which they’re the same story.
You see a scene. You see this scene and you’re
looking at it and you’re perceiving it.
It’s coming through your eyes and you’re interpreting it and
you see something. You see a man and you see a
house. If you were to shut your eyes,
you could still hold that scene in memory.
And a week later, if I’m to ask you about that,
“What season was it?” you would do pretty well.
This is the story I want to talk about – how we do this.
And in the course of this I want to make a series of claims
that go something like this. For perception,
I want to first persuade you the problem of perception’s hard
and that successful perception involves educated and
unconscious guesses about the world.
For attention, I want to suggest that we
attend to some things and not others and we miss a surprising
amount of what happens in the world.
For memory, there are many types of memory.
The key to memory is organization and understanding.
And you can’t trust some of your memories.
How many of you remember where you were at 9/11?
Many of you are wrong. And I am never going to
persuade you of this because you have certain memories.
And you could tell the story. Everybody could tell the story
where they were when the towers went down.
But clever psychologists on September 12 said,
“Let’s do a study.” And they asked people,
“Where were you yesterday when you heard the news?”
And they told them. And then they went back to them
later, a year later, two years later,
and said, “Tell me about what happened September 11.”
And they said, “I remember totally where I
was. I have a very–” And then–And
often the story was wrong. There is a lot like that which
we’re going to talk about. And the biggest moral then–so,
I put it really, in really big print–We are
often wrong about our experiences, both of the present
and of right now. So, let’s start with perception.
There is a story–I went to graduate school at MIT and there
was a story there about Marvin Minsky who is the A.I.
guru. He–If you’ve heard the
words–the phrase “artificial intelligence,” that was him.
And if you heard the claim that people are nothing more than
machines made of meat–also him. Well, there’s a story where he
was doing work on robotics and he was interested in building a
robot that could do all sorts of cool things that’s like a robot.
And the story goes the robot had to among–had to write–had
to see the world. It had to be able to pick up
things and recognize people and see chairs and navigate its way
and Minsky said, “That’s a tough problem.
It’s going to take a graduate student a whole summer to figure
it out.” And he assigned it to a
graduate student for a summer project.
Visual psychologists, perception psychologists,
love that story because the study of computer vision and
robotics vision and the attempts to make machines that can
identify and recognize objects has been a profound failure.
There is, at this point, no machine on earth that could
recognize people and objects and things at the level of a really
dumb one-year-old. And the reason why is that it’s
a much harder problem than anybody could have expected.
Well, what makes it such a hard problem?
Well, one reason why you might think it’s an easy problem is
you say, “Okay. We have to figure out the
problem of how people see. Well, here’s what we do.”
You’re in–You’re over there and here’s your eye.
And somehow it has to get to this television monitor and then
you look at it and that’ll solve the problem of how you see.
So, sometimes people say, “Hey. I hear the eye flips things
upside down. I guess this guy is going to
have to get used to looking at things upside down.
That’s an interesting problem.” No.
That’s not the way to look at it because that doesn’t answer
any questions. That just pushes the question
back. Fine.
How does “he” see? We’re not answering anything.
Similarly, although the Terminator’s view of the world
may correspond to that , that doesn’t solve any problem
of how he actually sees. So, he has all these numbers
shooting out there. Well, he has to read the
numbers. He has to see this.
This is my iTunes. [laughter] That’s inadvertent.
Here’s the right way to think about perception.
You got the eye, which is very ugly and bloody,
and then around here you have the retina.
And the retina is a bunch of nerve cells.
And the nerve cells fire at–for some stimulus and not
others. And from this array of firings,
“firing… not firing… firing… not firing,” you have
to figure out what the world is. So, a better view is like this.
The firings of the neurons could be viewed as an array of
numbers. You have to figure out how to
get from the numbers to objects and people, and to actions and
events. And that’s the problem.
It’s made particularly a difficult problem because the
retina is a two-dimensional surface and you have to infer a
3D world from a two-dimensional surface.
And this is, from a mathematical point of
view, impossible. And what this means is that
there–For any two-dimensional image there is an indefinite
number of three-dimensional images that correspond to it.
So for instance, suppose you have this on your
retina, an array of light shaped like that .
What does that correspond to in the world?
Well, it could correspond to a thing just like that that you’re
looking for or it could correspond to a square that’s
tilted backwards. And so, you have to figure out
which is which. And the way we solve this
problem is that we have unconscious assumptions about
how the world works. Our minds contain certain
assumptions about how things should be that enable us to make
educated guesses from the two-dimensional array on to the
three-dimensional world. And I purposefully did not make
the slides available for this class ahead of time because I
don’t want people to cheat, but there are several points
where you could look at the slides and confirm that some of
the things I’m going to tell you are actually true.
And I want to give you three examples.
One is color. And I’m going to conflate here
color and brightness. The other is objects.
The other is depth. First, the problem of color.
How do you tell a lump of coal from a snowball?
Well, that’s a lump of coal and that’s a snowball,
and it’s from Google images. How do you know which is which?
Well, a lump of coal you say is black and a snowball is white.
How do you know? Well, maybe you have on your
retina–Your retina responds to sort of color that hits it.
It’s oversimplified, but let’s assume that this is
true. So, this is black coming out
and that’s white and that’s how you tell.
But in fact, that can’t be right.
It can’t be right because objects’ color is not merely a
matter of what material they’re made of but of the amount of
light that hits it. So, as I walk across the stage
I fall into shadow and light, and none of you screams out,
“Professor Bloom is changing colors!”
Rather, you automatically factor out the change in
illumination as this is happening.
And this could actually be quite striking.
So, you see this display over here.
Take a look at those two blocks. I take it you see this one as
lighter than that one. You do.
You might imagine this is because this strip is lighter
than this but it isn’t. They’re the same.
And you won’t believe me until you actually print it out and
take a look, but they are in fact the same.
I’ll show it to you. And you could say I’m tricking
you but this is the way it works.
There’s the close-up. So, remember we’re comparing
this and this. Now, let’s take away other
parts of the environment and you’ll see they’re the same.
Now you say, “But hold it. This can’t be the same as this”
but the answer is–goes like this.
We know shadows make surfaces darker.
We don’t know this like “Here’s something I know.”
Rather, we know this in that it’s wired up in our brains.
So when we see a surface in shadow we automatically assume
that it’s lighter than it looks, and we see it as lighter.
And you could show this by removing the cues to the shadow.
And you see it as it really is. And this is an illustration of
how the information to your eyes is just one bit of information;
the degree of light coming from a single source is one bit of
information that you use to calculate certain assumptions
and come to a conclusion. Here’s a different kind of
example: Objects. You see this and you
automatically and intuitively segment it into different
objects. You segment it into a man and a
house and birds and trees. How do you do this?
It turns out, to program a computer to
segment a scene into different objects is hugely difficult and
the question of how we do it is, to some extent, unknown.
But one answer to this question is there are certain cues in the
environment that are signals that you’re dealing with
different objects. And these cues are often
described as Gestalt principles. So, one example is “proximity.”
When you see things that are close to each other,
you’re more likely than not to assume that they belong to the
same thing. There’s “similarity.”
That display could correspond to an indefinite number of
objects but you naturally tend to see it as two.
You do one with one texture pattern, the other with the
other texture pattern. “Closure.”
The fact that this is a closed square here suggests it’s a
single object . “Good continuation.”
If you had to judge, this could just as well be two
shapes, one that runs from A to C, the other one that runs from
D to B. But you don’t tend to see it
that way. Rather, you tend to see it as
one that runs from A to B, the other one that runs from C
to D. “Common movement.”
If things move together they’re a single object.
And “good form.” You see the object over there .
In the absence of any other information, you might be
tempted to say that’s a single thing, a plus sign maybe.
This , because it has lousy form, you’re more tempted to say
it’s two things, one thing lying on top of each
other. And these are the sort of cues,
expectations; none of them are right.
There’s cases where they could all fool you.
But these are useful cues that guide our parceling of the
world, our segmenting of the world into distinct objects.
Here they are summarized . And here’s a case where they
fool you . So you might think,
if you’re suggestible, that there is a triangle here.
And this is a case where there are certain cues driving you to
think that there’s a triangle here.
There is, however, no triangle here.
If you cover up these little Pacmen here, the triangle goes
away. Similarly, there is no square
in the middle . There is no square.
It’s very Matrix. And these are illusions because
these are cues that there should be a square there,
the regularity of form. Finally, “depth.”
You see this and you don’t–You see it on one level as a flat
thing. Another level you look inside
the picture and you see, for instance,
the man is in front of the house.
You look at me and you see the podium.
And if you have a terrible neurological disorder you see
this strange creature that’s half podium leading on to a
chest and up to a head that’s sort of–the top of him is
wiggling and the podium staying still.
If you are neurologically normal, you see a man walking
back and forth behind a podium. How do you do that?
Well, this is really a problem because, I could give you a
technical reason why vision is hard,
but crudely, you got a two-dimensional
retina and you have to figure out a three-dimensional world.
How do you do it? And the answer once again is
assumptions or cues. There are certain assumptions
the visual system makes that aren’t always right and in fact,
in cases of visual illusions, can be wrong but will guide you
to perceive the world in a correct and accurate way.
So for example, there is binocular disparity.
This is actually a sort of interesting one.
This is the only depth cue that involves two eyes.
If I look at you pretty close, the image I get here and the
image I get here are somewhat different while–or I have to
focus my eyes together to get the same image.
If I look at you in back, they’re almost identical
because the further away, given the two eyes that are
static, the closer the images look.
And it’s not, again, that you say to
yourself, “Oh. Back there an orange.
It’s the same image in my right eye and my left eye.
You must be far away.” Rather, unconsciously and
automatically you make estimations on how far people
are in depth based on binocular disparity.
There is “interposition.” How do you know I’m in front of
the podium and the podium’s not in front of me?
No. How do you know the podium’s in
front of me? Well, from where I’m standing
it’s right. How do you know the podium is
in front of me? Well, because I’m walking here
and then it cuts into me. And unless I’m going through a
grotesque metamorphosis, what’s happening is it makes
sense to say I’m moving behind the podium.
Interposition. You take the guy.
How do you know the guy is standing in front of the house?
Well, because there is–you see all of him and he’s blocking a
lot of the house. There’s relative size.
How far away am I? Well, if you looked at me and
you had to estimate how far away I am, part of the way you’ll
figure that out is you know how tall a human’s supposed to be.
If you thought that I was fifty feet tall, you would assume I’m
further away than I am. And so, your judgments on size
dictate your judgments about distance.
Usually, this cue isn’t necessary but if you look at the
Empire State Building–If you go into a field and you see a tower
and you look, your judgment of how far away
the tower’s going to be depends on your knowledge of how tall a
tower should be. If it’s this tall, you say, “Oh.
It must be–” And then you’d be surprised.
There’s texture gradient, which I’ll explain in a second,
and linear perspective, which I’ll also explain in a
second. Texture gradient goes like this.
Remember the problem we had before.
How do you know if that thing is this object or an object in
and of itself? Well, the answer is things with
textures will show themselves because the textures will get
smaller from a distance. Now, logically,
this could still be a single thing standing upright with just
dots going up smaller. But the natural assumption is
the reason why the dots recede in this regular fashion is
because it’s receding in depth. Classic illusion – the
Mueller-Lyer illusion. People will see this as longer
than this . It’s not.
If you don’t believe me, print it out and measure it.
Related to the Ponzo illusion, once again people see this one
as–you get illusions named after you when you discover
these–this one as longer than this .
Again, it’s not. What’s going on here?
Well, the top line looks longer even though it isn’t.
And one explanation for why is, these other lines in the scene
cause your visual system to make guesses about distance.
And then you correct for distance by making assumptions
about size. If you have two lines–You’ll
get–We’ll get in more detail in a second, but if you have two
lines and they take up the same amount of space on your retina,
but you believe that one is 100 feet away and the other’s 50
feet away, the one that’s 100 feet away you will see as bigger
because your brain will say, “Well, if it takes up just this
much space but it’s further away, it must be bigger than
something that’s closer and takes up that much space.”
And that’s what goes on here. For the top line,
for the Mueller-Lyer illusion, we assume that this is further
away and this is closer based on the cues to distance.
And the cue is factored in. And because we assume that this
is further away, we assume it must be bigger to
take up the same space as this which is closer.
Similarly for the Ponzo illusion.
There’s linear perspective. Parallel lines tend to recede
in distance. If this top one is further away
than this but they take up the same size in your eye,
this one must be bigger and you see it as bigger.
And the book offers more details on how these illusions
work. I’m going to end with an
illusion that I’m not even going to bother explaining.
I’ll just show it to you because you should be able to,
based on thinking about these other illusions,
figure it out. It was developed by Roger
Shepard. Well, you know that.
And they are called Shepard tables .
And the thing about it is, these look like two tables.
If you ask people–You don’t frame in terms of here’s a
lecture on visual perception. You ask people,
“Which of these tables would be easier to get through a door if
you have a thin door?” People would say the one on the
left. This one looks sort of thicker
and harder to get through. This one looks longer and
leaner. In fact, they’re the same size.
What I mean by that is that this is exactly the same as this
. Now, I’m going to prove it to
you by showing you something which took me–on the computer
which took me about seven hours to do.
And nobody’s going to believe it because I could have faked
it. But if you want,
print it out and do it yourself.
You just take a piece of paper, put it on here.
Then you move it and the same. I showed it to somebody and
they called me a liar. Anyway, you could do it
yourself in the privacy of your own home or study.
But what I’d really like you to do after you do it is say,
“Okay. Fine.
Why does this one look longer and thinner than this one?”
And the answer is the same answer that will explain the
Mueller-Lyer illusion and the Ponzo illusion,
having to do with cues to depth and the way your mind corrects
the perception of depth. And that’s all I have to say at
this point about perception. I want to move now to attention
and memory and I’m going to treat attention and memory
together. We are fascinated with memory
and, in particular, it’s particularly interesting
when memory goes wrong. It’s particularly fascinating
what happens in cases of amnesia.
So for example, I need a volunteer who is
willing to do a little bit of acting, a very little bit,
an incredibly little bit. Excellent.
Okay. So well, you just stay there.
So pretend you have amnesia. Okay?
What’s your name? Student: I don’t know.
Professor Paul Bloom: Perfect.
I’m really glad you said that. That’s the wrong answer because
you don’t have total amnesia. You still remember English.
Okay. It’s very clever.
Okay. So you couldn’t have lost all
your memories. You have English.
You –So we’ll do you. What’s your name?
Oh. He looks puzzled but he still
maintains bowel and bladder control so he hasn’t forgotten
everything. [laughter]
Now, I always lose the third volunteer in that demo.
So, what I’m saying is that memory is a hugely broad
concept. It includes autobiographical
memory, which is what we standardly think.
That’s a perfectly rational response.
When I say somebody’s losing their memory,
“Oh. I have a movie about somebody
losing their memory,” you don’t imagine a person in diapers.
You imagine the person walking around, having sex with cool
people and saying, “Where am I?”
And [laughter] so what you imagine is you
imagine them losing their autobiographical memory,
their sense of self. But of course,
knowing English is part of your memory and knowing how to stand
and knowing how to chew and swallow are all things that
you’ve learned, that you’ve–that have been
molded by experience. There’s another distinction
which is going to come in regarding amnesia,
which is there’s broadly two types of amnesia.
They often run together, but one type of amnesia is you
lose your memory of the past. Another type of amnesia–That’s
the Matt Damon amnesia. Another type of amnesia though
is you lose the ability to form new memories.
And here’s a film of a man who had exactly this problem.
He was a world-renowned choir director and he suffered viral
encephalitis which led to brain damage which destroyed most of
his temporal lobes, his hippocampus,
and a lot of his left frontal lobe.
It could be–It could have been worse in that he retains the
ability to talk. He seems to be–He’s not
intellectually impaired. He just can’t form new memories
and so he lives in this perpetual “now” where just
nothing affects him and he feels–This has not always
happened. There’s more than one of these
cases and it doesn’t always happen like this,
but he feels continually reborn at every moment.
And we’ll return to this and then ask what’s going on here.
But there’s a few themes here. I want to, before getting into
detail about memory, I want to review some basic
distinctions in memory when we talk about memory.
So crudely, you could make a distinction between sensory
memory, short-term memory, which is also known as working
memory, and long-term memory. Sensory memory is a residue in
your senses. There’s a flash of lightning.
You might see an afterimage. That afterimage is your sensory
memory. There’s somewhat of a longer
echoic memory for sounds. So as somebody is talking to
you even if you’re not paying attention you’ll store a few
seconds of what they’re saying, which is sometimes,
when somebody’s talking to you and you’re not listening to them
and they say, “You’re not listening to me.”
And you say, “No. You were talking about–” and
pick up the last couple of seconds from echoic memory.
There’s short-term memory. Anybody remember what I just
said? If you did, that’s short-term
memory–spans for a few minutes. And then there’s long-term
memory. Anybody know who Elvis is?
Do you know your name? Do you know where you live?
Your long-term memory store that you walk around with and
you’re not going to lose right away.
When we think about amnesia in the movie sense,
we think of a certain loss of long-term memory associated with
autobiographical personal events.
There is a distinction between implicit and explicit,
which we’ll talk about it in more detail.
But explicit, crudely, is what you have
conscious access to. So, what you had for dinner
last night. You could think back and say,
“I had this for dinner last night.”
Implicit is more unconscious.
What the word–what certain word–what the word “had” means,
how to walk, how to ride a bicycle,
that you might not be able to articulate and might not even be
conscious of but still have access to.
There’s a distinction between semantic memory and episodic
memory. Semantic memory is basically
facts, what a word means, what’s the capital of Canada,
and so on. Episodic is autobiography,
is what happened to you. That Yale is in New Haven is
semantic. That you went on vacation away
from New Haven last week, it would be episodic.
There is encoding stores and retrieval, which refers to
different levels of what happens in memory.
Encoding is getting the memory in, as when you study for a test
or you have an experience. And storage is holding the
memory. And retrieval is getting the
memory out. Finally, retrieval is often
broken, conveniently, into recall versus recognition,
where recall is when you just pull it out of memory and
recognition is when you recognize what corresponds to
something in the past. Anybody remember what color tie
I had on two days ago? Oh.
Okay. Well, that would be impossible
to remember but if I asked you, “Is it purple or is it orange?”
that would be much easier. [laughter]
Now, you could break up, crudely, the memory into
stages. So you start that sensory
memory is just the stuff that comes in leading to short-term
memory, leading to long-term memory.
And this stage theory is something which we’ll discuss in
more detail. But this leads us to the issue
of attention. How do you get memory from your
sensations, from what you’re hearing?
I’m speaking to you. You’re hearing me.
How does it ever get in to the other systems?
What decides what’s remembered and what’s not?
There’s all sorts of things happening to you now.
The seat of your chair is pressing against your butt.
You wouldn’t say, “Oh. I want to remember this forever.
The seat’s pressing against my butt.”

[laughter]

Your neighbor is exuding a
certain sort of smell. You’re thinking about something.
Your eyes follow him. Not everything gets in memory.
You’d go mad if you tried to remember everything.
You can’t. So, what determines what gets
into memory? Well, one answer is “attention
does.” And attention is–could be
crudely viewed as a flashlight, a spotlight on experience that
willingly zooms in on something and makes it memorable.
Attention has certain properties.
Some things come from attention–to attention
effortlessly and automatically. Here’s an example.
You’re going to see an array of letters here.
One of them’s going to be green. When you see the green one,
please clap. [laughter]
No, not this green one. [laughter]
There’s going to be another slide.
Okay. You’re ready now.
but there’s going to be an “o.” When you see it clap.
Okay. Sometimes it’s work.
Find the red “o.” [laughter] It’s harder.
Sometimes attention is involuntary.
I need a volunteer. And all I want to do is I want
to show you colors on the screen and I’d like you to name the
colors as they come out.
Do you want this? Student 1: I’m
colorblind. Professor Paul Bloom: Oh.

[laughter]

The first one is easy.
See. This is–You have to just go
down the colors . Anybody?
Okay. Student 2: Red,
green, blue, black, green,
blue, red, blue, black, red.
Professor Paul Bloom: Excellent.

[applause]

Okay. Now these.
These will be words but just name–Okay, you.
Just name the colors. Student 3: Green,
red, blue, black, blue, red, green,
black, red, blue. Professor Paul Bloom:
Perfect. Now, we’ll go back to you,
same deal, words. Student 4: Red,
blue, green — Professor Paul Bloom: No,
no, no. Huh uh.
Don’t–I know you can read. The colors.
Student 4: Okay. Sorry.
Okay. Blue, green,
red, green, black, green, blue,
black, red, Professor Paul Bloom: Very good actually.

[laughter]

That’s known as the Stroop
effect. Being an expert reader,
as you are, your knowledge of reading, your attention to what
the words meant, subverted your desire to do the
task. You couldn’t make that go away
even if you wanted to. If somebody gave you $1,000 to
read this as fast as you read this, and as fast as you read
this, you’d be unable to. You can’t block it.
There is some work–There are some interesting discoveries
about attention. I have a demonstration here.
I’d like people actually–It’s important–Some of you may have
seen this before. It’s important for you to be
silent throughout it. What you’re going to see is
you’re going to see two teams of basketball players.
One of them is going to have white T-shirts.
The other one will have black T-shirts.
They’ll be passing balls back and forth.
What I’d like you to do is count in your head how many
passes the white team does with the ball.

[laughter]

What number did people get?
Okay. Did anybody notice anything
unusual? [laughter]
Did anybody not notice anything unusual?
Okay. Some people did not notice
anything unusual. Those who didn’t see anything
unusual, watch this again and just watch it.

[laughter]

About 50% of people when
counting, who have never seen this before don’t notice
anything. But then when you’re not
counting it’s kind of obvious what you’re missing.

[laughter]

And this is one demonstration
among many of the fact that when you’re attending to something
you have a very small window of attention and you lose the focus
on other things. Here’s another different
example. I’d like people to watch a
movie and pay attention very closely to what happens in the
movie and try to remember this. How many of you noticed
something odd in that movie? How many of you didn’t?
Okay. Now, everybody look at the
scarf, the color of the plates and the food,
among other things. The phenomena,
in general, has been called “change blindness.”
And what it is is we tend to be–when there’s a focus of
attention focused in a certain way,
we tend to be oblivious to other things that go on in the
environment. Often it is,
in fact, quite difficult when there’s a change in scene to
notice what changes and what stays the same.
So, in this final demo, there’s just going to be two
pictures flicking. Could you clap when you see
what’s different between the two pictures?

[applause]

[laughter]
I myself am terrible at these and so I have a lot of sympathy.
How many people never saw it?

[laughter]

Good. That’s very impressive.

[laughter]

One more time with a different
one.

[applause]

Did anybody not see it?
Be honest. I’ll give you another try.

[applause]

Okay. I’ll put you out of your misery.

[laughter]

This is work by Dan Simons and
it’s part of an extraordinarily interesting body of work on
what’s known as “change blindness.”
And what this means is, the phenomena is,
we have a very narrow focus of attention and huge changes can
happen that we are oblivious to. This is why,
in movies, there are so many–so much difficulty with
continuity changes. Dan Simons is also famous for
having brought this outside of the laboratory in some classic
experiments and I’m trying to get the film corresponding to
them. What he did was that he did
this great study in the Cornell campus where he was–where what
happened is they would get some unsuspecting person walking
through campus and some guy would come over and say,
“Excuse me, Sir. I’m lost.
Could you help me with directions?”
And have a map and then the person would say,
“Sure.” And then there’d be two
construction workers holding a door.
And these guys were going to rudely bump between these two
characters and then the experimenter gets switched with
another guy. So now, when these two guys
walk away, the subject is standing there with an entirely
different person. [laughter]
What’s interesting is nobody notices.

[laughter]

They notice if the person
changes sexes. “Didn’t you used to be a woman?”

[laughter]

And they notice if the
experimenter changes races, but most other changes they’re
oblivious to. There’s another experiment.
I think Brian Scholl did this one but it may have been Dan
Simons where what happens is a subject comes in to the lab.
They say, “If you’re going to do an experiment with us,
you need to sign the human subject form.”
Hands him the form, the experimenter.
The subject signs the form. The experimenter takes the form
and says, “Thank you. I’ll put it down here.”
Goes down here and then a different person pops up.

[laughter]

People don’t notice. And there’s a certain level on
which we’re oblivious to changes.
What’s weird is we don’t see–we don’t think we are.
We think we see the world as it is and we don’t know–notice
that when we’re attending to something;
everything else gets blanked out.
And so about 50% of people who have never seen this demo
before, the gorilla demo, they don’t notice the gorilla.
And there’s–you couldn’t imagine anything more obvious.
The gorilla study was actually done a very long time ago.
And it was originally done in a different way but I’ll show it
to you just because this is the original study and now that you
all know what to expect–Oh, not that one.
Oops. Nope.
That’s actually–If you looked at that quickly,
it’s a current Yale professor. Oh.
I’m never going to get my DVD back.
Anyway, I’ll show you the other demo on–next week.
I will. [laughter]
Any questions about attention and memory at this point?
Yeah. Student: [inaudible]
Professor Paul Bloom: Yeah.
Why does it work that way? Why is it–Why do things that
become very practiced become automatic and involuntary?
It’s a good question. I don’t know.
We know that they do. We know that once you–that you
can’t not read once you know how to read.
You also can’t not listen. If I’m talking to you and I’m
extremely boring, but I’m talking to you,
it’s very hard not to listen. You can’t shut off your ears.
You could put your fingers in them but you can’t shut off
your–You also can’t shut your eyes without actually shutting
them. You can’t say,
“This is a disgusting movie. I’m not going to attend to it.”

[laughter]

So, that’s not answering your
question. It’s just saying that your
observation is a right one and a more general one.
When you’re good at something and you’re over-practiced,
it becomes involuntary and you cannot stop it.
Okay. Well–Oh.
One more in back. Yes.
Student: [inaudible] Professor Paul Bloom:
What now? Sorry.
Over there. Yeah.
Student: [inaudible] right before his accident?
Professor Paul Bloom: Did he remember things before
his accident? Yes.
He had some amnesia of events before his accident but he did
remember things. He knew his name and he knew
other things about his life. Okay.
I’ll see you next week.