Loving your child's mind: Perception

So we're going to talk about perception. I'll re-put it in the chat, and Sankara was about to read this paragraph on perception. Go for it, Sankara.

Perception includes the five senses: touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. It also includes what's known as proprioception. Proprioception, a set of senses involving the ability to detect changes in the body positions and movement. It also involves the cognitive process required to process information, such as recognizing the face of a familiar friend or detecting a familiar scent.

Okay, so there are a lot of words in there. I expect the word proprioception is new to all of you. And cognitive, I think we've mentioned before, but does anyone remember what cognitive is? No problem if you haven't. Before we get into cognitive and proprioception, can anybody explain what you think perception is? Your own definition of perception? Go, Alana.

I might be thinking of a different word, and I think I am, but like, I think it's your way of viewing things.

Okay. Um, what, what leads you to— do you think you've heard of it before?

I think so, because I think I'm thinking of the word perspective, but I thought that they sounded kind of familiar.

That's interesting. Perspective, perspective and perception, obviously the per is related. So that's an interesting interpretation. So let's stick with that. And let's go through— there are 3 sentences here. And I think the first sentence is pretty easy. But let's check. Perception includes the 5 senses: touch, sight, smell, Touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. Any questions about that one? I mean, have you all heard of the five senses before?

Yes.

Okay, so Lana, you were— say us what again you thought perception might be, and let's see if it applies to this first sentence.

Um, I thought that it might be your way of viewing things.

Okay, so viewing would be part of this. Would that be consistent with this, that your way of viewing things?

A little bit, because it really only— because your way of viewing things, like, it's your senses, so you're either seeing it or hearing it or other things. So at least a little bit.

Okay, so we can go into the others. Sankara is saying there are 20 senses. Do you want to talk about the 20 senses? Sankara?

It's because the 5 senses are just the basic senses that we all know of, and I don't know all the other ones. But so basically, I read, I read about them in How to Be Good at— in a book I have, How to Be Good at Science.

Okay, actually, because the very next sentence talks about it also includes what is known as proprioception, a set of senses— so more than one senses— involving the ability to detect changes in body positions and movements. Um, so as Cara said, the first 5— touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste— those are the basic 5. Now we have a whole set called proprioception which is a set of senses involving the ability to detect changes in body positions and movements. Does it make any sense at all that we have senses related to how we detect body position and movement? How could that be like a sense? Go, Alana.

Maybe because you're seeing it, and so you recognize the movements and the changes in the body positions.

Okay, um, and I want to kind of play with that a little bit. Suppose you were upside down. Would you know that you were upside down if you were upside down?

Probably, yeah.

Okay, and sometimes you would know you're upside down because of touch, like if your head is on the floor, you're doing a headstand, then you know you're upside down because of touch. But suppose like, um, you're doing a flip in the air like you might do in martial arts But suppose, yeah, you're upside down in the air. Do you think even without touching anything, well, then you'd see, right? You would see that you're upside down?

Yeah, you would see or you would hear yourself going up.

Okay, so I'm going to play around with what if you're not touching anything and suppose your eyes are closed. So if you're doing a flip and you're upside down, and your eyes are closed and you can't feel anything, would you still know you're upside down?

Yeah, I think I would.

And suppose you said hearing, Ilana. So suppose your ears were plugged, you were wearing sound-canceling headphones, you couldn't hear a thing. So you don't smell anything that tells you you're upside down, you don't taste anything you're upside down— those two are pretty easy— you're not touching anything, you're not seeing anything, you can't hear anything. Do you think your body would still know, oh, I'm upside down?

Yes, I think it would, because— and because you're upside down, the blood would rush to your head. And whenever, um, it does that, I can always feel it, like my head gets heavier.

Yeah, and that's why they call that a different set of senses. So your body knows if it's upside down. Um, and I think upside down is an extreme case. Would you say you're your body would know it's falling even if you couldn't see or touch anything? Your body knows kind of what's going on vis-à-vis three-dimensional space?

Yes.

Okay. Does it make sense to the rest of you that even if you can't see or touch or hear, your body knows what's going on if it's upside down or falling or something like that? Okay. So Sankara, when you talk about— and I'll let you talk in a minute— when you talk about additional senses beyond the five senses, our bodies know our bodies can sense if they're upside down, if they're falling, if they're jumping up. Our bodies can kind of sense what's going on in 3 dimensions. Um, go ahead, Sankara.

I mean, wait, I mean, um, I would do this thing called, um, it was like about like other universes and stuff, and then So basically it says that, it said that, um, that like your brain, like it's got something to do with like your gravity or something, but it's like, so if you were upside down and you opened your eyes, um, like something would happen and I'm like I can't really explain it. You have to watch it.

Okay, well, this may or may not be the same thing, but going— following up on the examples I was discussing with Ilana, suppose you were in zero gravity. Um, you guys all know what zero gravity is, right? Like if you're in space, you've seen the astronauts floating around in space. Um, do you think that even if you're— you couldn't see, you couldn't hear, you couldn't feel anything, that you think your body would know if you were in zero gravity? Go, Sankara.

Yeah, and also over time your body would try and get you out of it because your muscles would decay.

Yeah, but this is the whole proprioception. Proprioception refers to your body's own sense that in addition to the touch, sight, smell, and taste, your body can experience reality and kind of give you a sense of what's going on. I want to go to the last sentence, and it involves the cognitive processes. So cognitive relates to thought. So you could say perception involves the thought processes required to process information, such as recognizing the face of a friend or detecting a familiar scent. Does it make sense that, um, your, your mind has to think to recognize a face sometimes?

Yes.

Have you ever been in a situation where it takes you maybe just a moment to recognize somebody? You see their face, but it takes another moment to see, oh, that's so-and-so. And how about a smell as well? There's a smell, you think, I know that smell, I know that smell, and you think, oh, that's what the smell is. Does that make sense?

Yes.

So thought is not only, say, sight and smell and touch and so forth, it's also this— or perception is knowing what it is. Do you think we all perceive everything the same way?

No, and maybe no, because we're because we're not all the same, and yes, because— I don't know.

So I want to go back to your no and maybe, but Sankara had something. Go, Sankara.

No, because— I mean, actually, yes, because Um, like, what was the question again? I've forgotten it.

Do we all perceive everything the same way, or do we perceive the same objects differently?

It depends what it is. If it's like your imagination, then no. But if it's like, it's like, if it's like, if you think I don't know what to say.

Okay, I want to pause. Have any of you ever heard of colorblindness? People who are blind? What is— what does it mean if somebody is colorblind? Go, Alana, and then Sankara.

Um, I think colorblind means that you can't see some colors. And those colors are replaced, or you think that those colors are replaced with other colors.

Okay, um, anything else to add to that, Sankara or Marwa?

Um, being colorblind means like you can't, you can't see a lot of, a lot of colors, but that also makes you like really good at finding a certain color even though you can't see it because it's like only black. And also, I have a friend whose dad is colorblind, and every time he sees my t-shirt, he doesn't— he thinks it's white.

There you go. Marwa, what were you going to add to that?

Colorblind means like you, like, if like it's orange, you can mix it up with different colors. Like you can say it's red, green, blue, and other different colors.

Have you ever known anyone who's colorblind?

Yes.

And they mix up colors sometimes?

Yeah.

Uh-huh. So I am a little bit colorblind. I can see most colors pretty well, but I have a little bit of red-green colorblindness. Actually, a lot more males are colorblind than females. Something like 10% of males are colorblind, but I think only like 1% of females are colorblind. So a lot more boys are a bit colorblind than girls. But for instance, I'm pretty sure that the curtain behind Sankara is greenish. And I think the headboard of his bed is kind of rust or or orange. Am I right, Sankara, or am I wrong?

Wrong. The curtain is gray and my headboard is bright white-ish.

And the headboard at the very end is bright white, but I mean the thing— maybe it's your chair, the thing leaning up against the curtains.

Oh yeah, yeah, you're right about— it's red.

Okay, so the curtains are actually gray?

Yeah.

Okay, I got that one wrong. See, this is where I am a little bit colorblind, and I think because it was next to the red, I was assuming it was green. But apparently, yeah, if you told me that was green, I'd believe you. Now that you're telling me it's gray, I would believe you, but my eyes cannot tell what color that is. If it's— I know it's not blue. I'm certain it's not blue. I'm certain it's not yellow. I'm certain it's not white, but I can't tell the difference between gray and green in that thing. So does it seem weird that I— can the rest of you see that that curtain is gray?

Yes. Yes.

Does it seem weird that I can't tell what color it is?

No.

Okay. One of the things that it's like is, have you ever been out in the moonlight, say at night where there's a bright moon? Would you say it's hard to see colors by moonlight? Can you see colors pretty well by moonlight?

Yeah, because, um, my parents say because I eat everything, but I just think it's because I have good eyesight.

Okay, maybe you can, but some people— do any of you have a hard time seeing colors just by the moonlight?

Yeah.

Okay, would you say that bright sunshine makes it easier to see colors than, say, moonlight? Bright colors, sunshine doesn't help. Okay, well, there's a whole scientific explanation for why some of us are a little bit colorblind. Our eyes are not perceiving, in this case, green. So if you guys can see that Sankara's curtain is green, it means your eyes have something that can perceive green, but my eyes are missing that particular thing that can perceive green. And so going back to perception, everybody sees the same curtain. I can see a curtain for sure, but you see the curtain as a different color than I do. Does that make sense?

Yes.

And so do you think there are other ways in which we see things differently from each other? That maybe Alana sees things differently than Marwa, who sees the different things differently than Sankara, who who sees things differently from Magat? Go ahead, Sankara, you were going to say something.

Um, maybe— I don't know, I think we all have a basic understanding of what things are.

So Sankara, you think we all see things exactly the same or almost exactly the same?

Almost exactly the same.

Is colorblind the only way in which you might see things differently, or could there be other?

If you're blind, you only see white.

Okay, um, but suppose that your eyesight is functioning normally, then do we all see everything exactly the same way?

No.

How do we see things differently?

Maybe you have a different understanding of it, or if you both have the same, you could— one person could be looking at it from one angle and the other one could be looking at it from the other.

Okay, before going to Sankara, say more about how having a different understanding could change the way we perceive things.

Maybe it's because, well, if I was looking at maybe an orange, I thought of it as food, and the other person thought that— or another person didn't know what it was, he or she could have thought that it was a ball.

Okay, that's an interesting example. Go, Sankara.

So my mom used to tell me about— I mean, and my dad used to tell me about this, like, people have different perceptions. Like, if you draw a number 9 and then one person stands at one end and another person stands at the other, one of them sees 9 and one of them sees 6.

That's a fascinating example. And by the way, you just used perceive as a verb. Perception is the noun, perceive is the verb, so they're very closely related. Do you guys get Sankara's example? If there's some drawing on the ground and Marwa's on one side and Alana's on the other side, Marwa might see a 6 and Alana might see a 9, even though it's exactly the same drawing.

Yes. Yes.

What's going on there? Is it really a 6 or is it really a 9, or what's going on there?

It might be a 6 and it might be a 9.

Okay, um, what were you gonna say, Alana?

Um, I was gonna say that it could be both.

It could be both a 6 and a 9 at the same time?

Yeah, because they're looking at it differently and they're seeing different things.

Okay, go, Sankara. What were you gonna say?

I'm gonna say what Alana said.

Okay, so it could be a 6 and it could be a 9. What about Alana's example of, um, an orange where one person thinks it's a ball, another— well, actually, let's— instead of saying it's an orange, suppose there is a spherical orange-looking shape and maybe it's some distance away. Um, is it possible one person thinks it's a ball and another person thinks it's an orange even though it's exactly the same spherical orange shape?

Yes.

Um, so do you think there are lots of things like that where We're seeing the same things, but we're perceiving reality differently?

Yeah. Yes.

Marwa, can you think of any examples?

Like, like, if I— let's say example like what Sankara said.

A 6 and a 9 kind of thing?

Yeah.

Okay, okay. Well, I think perception is really interesting, and, um, it does seem as if how our mind processes reality. So with the 6 and the 9, you're processing the same lines differently. With the orange-looking ball, you're processing it differently. Um, you know, with the— with Sankara's curtain, you guys are all processing it as gray, and I'm processing it as green. And by processing it, our minds make sense of reality, and our minds make sense of reality differently. I'm going to check in with you, Magat. Does this make sense to you, Magat?

Yeah.

That our minds interpret reality or make sense of reality differently? You're muted, Magat.

What?

Does it make sense that our minds interpret reality differently or make sense of reality differently?

Yes, it makes sense in the reality.

Okay, I want to do just one other example and then we'll go. I know, for instance, Ilana, you're an expert in jiu-jitsu. I bet if you and I were watching the same jiu-jitsu match, because you know what's going on and I frankly don't know what's going on, I bet you could see, oh, the person on the right is in a really good position to win, whereas the person on the left might not be in a good position. Does it make sense that you would understand jiu-jitsu better than I do because you're an expert in it?

Yes.

Okay. Um, and you know, same thing with Marwa, that in tennis— a long time ago I played a little bit of tennis, but my bet is that you're much better at tennis than I am. So I bet you could see in tennis Um, from the way somebody holds their racket? Well, let me check. Do you think by the way somebody holds their tennis racket you can tell if they're a good player or not?

No.

No? Okay. So sometimes there are places where we do become expert at something, and I would say becoming expert at something helps us see the world a little bit differently. So going back to the jiu-jitsu, we see exactly the same two people But if Ilana is more of an expert than I am, she's going to see that differently. And actually, becoming an expert is partly learning to see the world as an expert sees the world. Does that make sense?

Yes.

Yeah. Okay. Well, this is a big topic. Over time, we want to help you understand what it means to be an expert. But for now, we're just looking at perception. So thanks for the fascinating conversation, and I will let you guys go for the week. Have a good week, you guys. Have fun.

Bye-bye.