- How We Learn
- History of the English Language
- Understanding Linguistics
- The Story of Human Language
Listening to these lectures has really sparked a number of different language processing ideas. Last night as I was walking the dogs, I was listening to How We Learn lesson 6 "What Babies Know" when a quote from Carl Sagan popped into my head:
"The brain has evolved from the inside out... Its structure reflects all of the stages through which it has passed."What if the reflective, analytical part of our brain is communicating peripherally with the more primitive pieces to record memory?
Monisha Pasupathi (Professor, How We Learn Course) was talking about how we can distinguish male from female from far away based on the way they walk even before we perceive visual gender clues. The people tested could not explain what clues they pick up on.
My explanation for this is simple... Sometimes we learn without analysis. Our brains process and store subtle information about gait without consciously thinking about the bounciness, sway..etc. and given time to think about it, people, I am sure, could begin to assign labels to the qualities they stored in their prototype library of 'male' and 'female'. (I wish I could remember Pasupathi's conclusion -- but I drifted off into my own thoughts above.)
The nature of her question also made me think about Sagan's quote. What if the more primitive parts of our brain record things subtly, outside the pieces that compose consciousness. What comes to mind immediately are the regions that process horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines... We aren't aware of the independent brain processing for these 'types of lines', we see images as a whole.
I have a related pet hypothesis about staring. When I was a teenager, I used to scan page after page of hexidecimal numbers looking for specific patterns. I could find these patterns much more quickly if I lost focus, stopped moving my eyes and stared at the middle of the screen. By lost focus, I don't mean I made the image blurry, I mean that I consciously disengaged my attention. I can feel it when I have done it properly. There is a mental 'thunk' as focus shuts off and I take in everything I see. (I think I heard somewhere that people with autism live in that unfocused state.)
Pet Hypothesis:
Staring turns off visual focus (again, not necessarily optical focus). It relaxes the part of the brain used to maintain and process focused visual information while leaving other parts of the brain engaged. There are different types of staring... there is staring where you're completely disengaged from your surroundings, using your brain to process mentally generated imagery. Then there is staring where the brain is not turned inward, rather it is collecting sounds and information from the entire field of view.
Look at your middle knuckle on the back of your hand. Now, without moving your eyes, shift your attention to your fingers. Notice light, color, lines... Notice that you are aware of your fingers, but that details toward your finger tips are sketchy, out of focus. Now, look at your finger tips. As you shift focus, you should have the same sensation as when you snap out of a 'spontaneous' stare.
Something that just occurred to me. Optical focus also relaxes in response to a stare because optical focus is not as important when visual focus is turned off.
