Sunday, November 11, 2007
LINGUISTICS and EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY
How we do express what we see, feel or hear or experience in some other way
In this study, the researchers constructed a computer program where one group of dots on a computer screen seemed to follow a single dot across the screen. They asked study participants to describe what they were seeing. Most responded with something like, "That swarm of dots is chasing this other dot, attempting to capture it." The researchers interpreted this to mean that the participants had assigned agency to an inanimate object, the dots, and that this was empirical verification of an agency-detection mechanism that was set so high that it would produce false-positives.
This quotation is taken from here.
Whoever was the scientist expressing this idea, well, he has got the right to say so, but most probably he or they are completely wrong. The proper view at what the tested persons said would be a different one. People try to describe what they experience as short as possible, mostly, and if they must describe something they have never seen before, they try to find similarities, and if the easiest similarity is ascribing some inanimate thing animate traits so they do it, but the purpose of it is the ease of explanation. It would cost them too much energy to think how to describe that phenomenon and not ascribing the animate traits.
This is a typical task, teachers face everyday, how to explain something what students have never heard of before. Usually, teacher uses some kind of example that pictures similar principle and is commonly known to students. Just take the typical model of money and goods flow, so called circular flow in economics. It was first described by a doctor who noticed the similarity of blood circulation and circulation of money and goods in society.
Of course no one in economics would come up with the idea that this doctor is stupid because he ascribes animate traits to inanimate things like money and goods and services.
Funny, that these so called scientists do not know something as easy as this explanation. People just choose explanation that is fast at hand, and it will be supposed that the other person knows this picture. If the other person would not know the picture / model, such description would make no sense, and the first person would try to find other ways of describing the experienced phenomenon.
A good thing to do in order to understand this is to read and listen to works and lectures of Steven Pinker, one of the best psychologists based on linguistic point of view that is how words, grammar and language as such influence evolution of humans
In this study, the researchers constructed a computer program where one group of dots on a computer screen seemed to follow a single dot across the screen. They asked study participants to describe what they were seeing. Most responded with something like, "That swarm of dots is chasing this other dot, attempting to capture it." The researchers interpreted this to mean that the participants had assigned agency to an inanimate object, the dots, and that this was empirical verification of an agency-detection mechanism that was set so high that it would produce false-positives.
This quotation is taken from here.
Whoever was the scientist expressing this idea, well, he has got the right to say so, but most probably he or they are completely wrong. The proper view at what the tested persons said would be a different one. People try to describe what they experience as short as possible, mostly, and if they must describe something they have never seen before, they try to find similarities, and if the easiest similarity is ascribing some inanimate thing animate traits so they do it, but the purpose of it is the ease of explanation. It would cost them too much energy to think how to describe that phenomenon and not ascribing the animate traits.
This is a typical task, teachers face everyday, how to explain something what students have never heard of before. Usually, teacher uses some kind of example that pictures similar principle and is commonly known to students. Just take the typical model of money and goods flow, so called circular flow in economics. It was first described by a doctor who noticed the similarity of blood circulation and circulation of money and goods in society.
Of course no one in economics would come up with the idea that this doctor is stupid because he ascribes animate traits to inanimate things like money and goods and services.
Funny, that these so called scientists do not know something as easy as this explanation. People just choose explanation that is fast at hand, and it will be supposed that the other person knows this picture. If the other person would not know the picture / model, such description would make no sense, and the first person would try to find other ways of describing the experienced phenomenon.
A good thing to do in order to understand this is to read and listen to works and lectures of Steven Pinker, one of the best psychologists based on linguistic point of view that is how words, grammar and language as such influence evolution of humans
# posted by Dalibor @ 7:12 AM 
