Home Mushrooms How does a person perceive information, kinesthetics and visuals? How others see you How a person perceives

Mushrooms

How does a person perceive information, kinesthetics and visuals? How others see you How a person perceives

Instructions

In many ways, the perception of a person depends, especially at the initial stage of communication, on the first impression that he made. Studies have shown that people can assess a stranger or a stranger in just seven seconds, including whether they are interested in a person, attractive, smart, or stupid. Of course, the first is not completely correct, and sometimes completely deceptive, but this is not a reason to neglect the opportunity to win over people "at first sight." Posture, movements, gait, gestures, gaze, facial expressions provide 55% of the information; voice, timbre, speed of speech, intonation - 38%; and the words themselves - only 7%. Non-verbal information in the process of communication is up to 95%. All this together forms a holistic image of a person in the mind of the interlocutor.

Those who want to make their communication more effective are working on themselves, on their self-presentation. Lowered shoulders, hunched back, fussiness, clumsy or constrained movements give out self-doubt, so noticing this behind you, you can train the look, posture, gestures and voice of a confident person. The same words, spoken with different facial expressions and intonations, will produce completely different impressions.

Appearance is the first thing that people see and on the basis of which they judge a person. Here, first of all, the image as a whole plays a role. Whether a person is neat and tidy, whether his skin and hairstyle are in order, whether his clothes are not worn or wrinkled - these are all elementary things. It is also important how well the clothes fit on the figure, whether it suits the face, whether it is appropriate in a given setting, whether the colors are harmoniously combined. There are people who are inclined to assess the value of things and accessories and, based on this, draw conclusions about the status of their owner. Even if the clothes are inexpensive, it is good if they are of high quality and tasteful. Women pay more attention to small details than men, especially in the image of other women.

After evaluating the appearance and clothing, people begin to evaluate the personal qualities of the interlocutor. An open manner of communication and a smile is usually a big plus and helps to win people over to you. People who cross their arms and legs, constantly avert their eyes, do not smile, are perceived as closed and unfriendly. Communication skills and the ability to maintain a conversation are also very important. At the same time, it is far from always important to say smart things and shine with intelligence, sometimes pleasant conversations "about nothing" can initiate friendship or romantic relationships.

If, at the initial stage, sympathy was established between people, then they already begin to find out whether they have common interests, values and views on life. Everything here is individual. For someone with similar interests, your hobbies can make a big impression and a desire to get closer, and others can be alienated. This is natural, because all people are different and it is impossible to please everyone.

It can be difficult for a person himself to judge the impression he makes on people. To find out, you can try asking relatives and friends about it. Most likely, they will provide you with a lot of useful information. But keep in mind that they have known you for a long time and better than most other people, so there may be an element of bias in their judgments.

To find out what others think of you, psychologists suggest the following exercise: on the Internet or a psychological club, find strangers who agree to come to a general meeting for the sake of experiment. After meeting, telling about themselves, the participants will need to tell what impression each of those present made at first sight, what caught the eye in his appearance, manners and movements, what they liked and disliked about him, whether the initial impression changed after the conversation or not. Such an experiment can be exciting, and sometimes you can learn a lot of unexpected and even not very pleasant things about yourself, but it will help in working on yourself and will allow you not to make your usual mistakes in the future.

Types of human perception of information

How do people perceive what you say or show them?

It is no secret that human relations are based on trust in each other, not an exception in this regard, the relationship between the client and the seller. The purchase occurs primarily due to trust in you, and only then in the product. Trust is based on the message of one person to another that he understands the partner and his needs, that he is on his side. This is why trust is key in the sales process.

If a person who comes to make a purchase feels that you understand him and accept his position, then he will listen and remember what you are talking about. Accordingly, the sale will become easier for both of you, and perhaps even enjoyable. So what can be a tool on the path to trust and understanding of the person who came to buy?

Our picture of the world is formed thanks to perception, a mental process, which consists in the reflection of an object or phenomenon as a whole with its direct effect on receptors (hearing, sight, touch, smell). Depending on which receptor surfaces in humans dominate in perception, there are three main types: 1) visual (images, pictures, images); 2) auditory (sounds, voice, music); 3) kinesthetic (sensations, feelings).

With the help of perception, we form an attitude towards the surrounding reality. Therefore, we can safely say that perception and thinking are closely intertwined. The surrounding reality is perceived in the aggregate of all receptors, and depending on what is happening around a person can change one type to another. But there are ways to determine the type of worldview that would dominate at the moment. This, in turn, can be a useful tool for a successful transaction.

Kinesthetic people - who are they?

People who tend to feel and feel the world more often are kinesthetics. There are about 40% of them among the population. As they are, it is typical to perceive reality through touch, emotion, instinctive thinking. And kinesthetics make purchases under the influence of their feelings, quite quickly and impulsively make a decision whether they like a person. If they know they are doing the right thing, they can trust the salesperson.

You can reveal that you have a kinesthetic in front of you by the frequently encountered words about feelings: “I feel that you can suggest,” “I catch your thought,” “an amazing idea,” “it has significantly hit incomes,” They need time to make a decision, therefore, they tend to make long pauses between phrases ("mmm", "uh-uh"), thus listening to themselves and their feelings. It may be important for them to touch the items they may acquire. Touch helps them connect. In addition, kinesthetics are most sensitive to temperature extremes. If the room in which you are holding a business meeting is too warm or, conversely, cool, part of the audience simply will not be able to perceive the information. If a person's gaze is directed downward and to the right, then the kinesthetic is trying to determine his feelings,

If a kinesthetic is going to buy something, he definitely needs to give the product in his hands. It is necessary to focus on the sensations that a person can get when buying the necessary item. If this is a cosmetic product, then give him the opportunity to feel the surface and shape of the jar, pleasant to the touch, and the very texture of the cream. If it is a tablet or suspension, focus on how convenient it is to use, let the kinesthetics hold the box in their hands, turn the brochures / instructions in their hands.

Audials - people who are they?

Audials perceive this world through sounds. They tend to mutter something under their breath and talk to themselves, so they, pronouncing the problem, try to solve it. There are very few audios - only 25% of the population.

In a conversation, they are attracted by the timbre, the pitch of the voice, the tempo of speech, it is on their basis that he is inclined to draw conclusions about whether a sentence is needed. The audience's speech is filled with such accents: “don't talk to me in that tone!”, “Can you be a little quieter?”, “It sounds convincing,” etc.

The speech of such people is unhurried, measured and rhythmic, with awareness of every word. It is also important for you to be patient, taking short pauses so that you have time to reflect. If you talk tirelessly, he probably won't hear you. Also, if your product has sonic merit, be sure to highlight it in your conversation with him.

Audials, like visuals, love illustrative material, but they perceive it differently. After proposing a brochure, pause for 15 seconds and then explain something about it and its purpose. This pause is necessary for the audience in order to orient themselves in what they are shown. Only then do they want to hear explanations.

Visuals people who are they?

Visuals are people who are used to perceiving the world around them through the prism of images and pictures. They visualize everything around them as much as possible. Their thoughts "draw" pictures. Their actions are guided by images, the visual, as it were, sees their actions. About 35% of the population is visual. They can easily turn any words into pictures. To facilitate communication with such people, it is necessary to express thoughts in "visual" terms. Then they are guaranteed the comfort next to you. Visuals have excellent visual memory, and can describe in detail objects from their past.

To determine whether the person in front of you refers to visuals, you need to pay attention to his speech, since in it you can probably find such words as “see”, “demonstrate”, “clear”, “bright”, “illustrate”, “ watch ”,“ show ”, etc.

It is important to remember that appearance is extremely important for the visual. He will appreciate it if you are wearing an ironed robe, and this morning you spent about an hour on your hair.

If you are going to sell a product to a visual, then, when talking about the benefits, first of all use the same "visual" words that are present in his speech as arguments. Secondly, you should always have at hand colorful and visual illustrations, perhaps even with graphs and tables, then any thought will be perceived faster. And, no matter how trivial it may seem, do not neglect your hands. For example, while explaining something, you can draw diagrams with your hands in the air.

Fully armed

All of the above types of perception can be used by you both in sales and in your personal life. However, not always and not everywhere there is an opportunity to tune in to one specific buyer. Sometimes people are not in the mood for communication, but feel the need to purchase a product. And if there is a queue in front of you, then in general it is very difficult to recognize who belongs to which type. The best solution is to remain yourself and act according to your own intuition. Show concern and concern. No one has ever been hindered by the desire to help their client or customer; rather, on the contrary, it creates a pleasant impression and disposes to itself.

Trust yourself and be bold. Your own experience gained over the years is the best helper. Give the person who comes to you for help feeling that you understand him and accept his position. Even if there is no purchase, you will give someone a good mood and a feeling of being needed. And, most likely, in the future he will become your regular customer.

Figure and background. As psychologists say, everything that a person perceives, he perceives as a figure in the background. A figure is something that is clearly, clearly perceived, that a person describes, communicating what he perceives (sees, hears, etc.). But at the same time, any figure is necessarily perceived against a certain background. The background is something indistinct, amorphous, unstructured. For example, we will hear our name even in a noisy company - it usually immediately stands out as a figure against the sound background. Psychology encourages, however, not to be limited to everyday examples and check their statements in experiments.

On visual presentation, it has been established that a surface with clear boundaries and a smaller area acquires the status of a figure. The figure combines such image elements that are similar in size, shape, symmetric, moving in the same direction, located most close to each other, etc. Consciousness perceives the figure, grouping the image elements according to the proximity factor. The dashes in Figure 18 are perceived as being grouped into columns of two, rather than just dashes on a white background.

Rice. 18. Grouping by proximity factor

If the subject is given different messages to the left and right ears and asked to repeat one of them aloud, then the subject easily copes with this task. But at this time he is not aware of another message, does not remember it, cannot say, what was discussed there, or even in what language it was spoken. At best, he can tell whether there was music or speech, whether a female or a male voice spoke. Psychologists call an unrepeatable message in such an experiment shaded; it is, as it were, in the shadow, in the background. Nevertheless, the subject somehow reacts to this message. He, for example, immediately realizes the appearance of his name in him. Here is one experiment to support the perception of the shadowed message. The repeated message contains sentences containing homonyms, for example: “He found the KEY in the clearing”, and the shaded message for some subjects includes the word “WATER”, and for other subjects - “DOOR”. Then the subjects are asked to recognize from the many sentences presented to them those that they repeated. Among the proposals presented there are the following: "He found a spring in a clearing" and "He found a master key in a clearing." It turned out that the first subjects confidently recognize the sentence about the spring, and the second ones equally confidently recognize the sentence about the master key. And, of course, the subjects of both groups could not reproduce anything from the shaded message, that is, they did not remember anything about it.

The relativity of the status of the figure and the background can be illustrated by the example of ambiguous drawings (they are also called dual images). In these drawings, the figure and the background can change places, as the figure can be realized that with another understanding of the picture is understood as the background. Turning a shape into the background and vice versa is called restructuring. Thus, in the famous drawing of the Danish psychologist E. Rubin (see Fig. 19), one can see either two black profiles on a white background, or a white vase on a black background. Note: if a person is aware of both images in such an ambiguous drawing, then, looking at the drawing, he will never be able to see both images at the same time, and if he tries to see only one of the two images (for example, a vase), then after some time will inevitably see something else (profiles).

Rice. 19. Figure of Rubin: two black profiles on a white background or a white vase on a black background

Paradoxical as it may sound, but being aware of the perceived, a person is always simultaneously aware that he has perceived more than he is currently aware of. The laws of perception are experimentally established principles according to which a conscious figure is distinguished from the multitude of stimuli received by the brain.

As a figure, one usually stands out that has some meaning for a person, which is associated with past experience, assumptions and expectations of the perceiving person, with his intentions and desires. This has been shown in many experimental studies, but specific results have significantly changed the way we look at nature and the process of perception.

The law of the aftereffect of the figure and the background. Perception constancy.A person prefers to perceive (be aware) of what he has already seen. This manifests itself in a series of laws. The law of the aftereffect of the figure and the background states: what a person once perceived as a figure tends to aftereffect, that is, to be re-singled out as a figure; what was once perceived as background tends to continue to be perceived as background. Let's consider some experiments demonstrating the manifestation of this law.

The subjects were presented with meaningless black and white images. (Such images are easy to make for anyone: on a small piece of white paper, you just need to draw some meaningless stripes with black ink so that the ratio of the volumes of black and white on the piece of paper is approximately the same.) In most cases, the subjects perceived the white field as a figure, and black - as a background, that is, they saw the image as white on black. However, with some effort, they could perceive the presented image and how black shape on a white background. In the preliminary ("teaching") series of the experiment, the subjects were presented with several hundred such images, each for about 4 s. At the same time, they were told what color image (white or black) they should see as a figure. The subjects tried “with all their might” to see exactly the image as a figure to which the experimenter was pointing. In the "testing" series of the experiment, which was carried out a few days later, they were presented with both new drawings and images from the previous series, and they should have, without any effort, perceive the presented as it is perceived by itself, and inform which field - white or black - see as a figure. It turned out that the subjects tended to perceive the old images as they did in the training series (although they generally did not even recognize these images), that is, to re-select the same figure and not select the same background.

We present to the subject for a fraction of a second a set of stimuli (these can be images or words, sounds or readings of the device, etc.). Its task is to identify the presented stimuli. Some of them he recognizes unmistakably. In some, he makes mistakes, that is, he selects the wrong (from the point of view of instructions) figure. It turns out that upon repeated presentation of stimuli in which he had previously made a mistake, the subject more often than accidentally makes mistakes again. Usually he repeats the same mistakes that he made earlier (“the figure will follow”), sometimes he makes different mistakes in a row (“background will follow”). The phenomenon of repetition of errors of perception, found in different experiments, is especially unexpected. Indeed, in order to repeat a mistake when presenting the same stimulus, the subject must first recognize that the presented stimulus is the same, remember that in response to its presentation he has already made such and such a mistake, that is, in essence it is correct. recognize and then repeat the mistake.

In some dual images, a person cannot see the second image in any way, even despite direct prompts from the experimenter. But then the subjects draw a picture that includes this image, or describe in detail what they saw, or express the associations that arise in connection with the picture.

In all such cases, the subjects' responses usually contain elements associated with the meaning of the picture, which they are not aware of. Such a manifestation of an unconscious background appears when the task or object of perception is changed.

The law of constancy of perception also speaks of the influence of past experience on perception: a person regards the familiar objects around him as unchanging. We move away from objects or approach them - they do not change in size in our perception. (True, if objects are far enough away, they still seem small, for example, when we look at them from the window of an airplane.) The mother's face, which changes depending on lighting conditions, distance, cosmetics, hats, etc., is recognizable a child as something unchanged already in the second month of life. We perceive white paper as white even under moonlight, although it reflects about the same amount of light as black coal does in the sun. When we look at a bicycle wheel at an angle, our eyes actually see an ellipse, but we perceive this wheel as round. In the minds of people, the world as a whole is more stable and stable than, apparently, it really is.

Perception constancy is in many ways a manifestation of the influence of past experience. We know that the wheels are round and the paper is white, which is why we see them that way. When there is no knowledge about the real shapes, sizes and colors of objects, then the phenomenon of constancy does not manifest itself. One ethnographer describes: once in Africa he, together with a local resident - a pygmy, came out of the forest. Cows grazed in the distance. The pygmy had never seen cows from afar before, and therefore, to the amazement of the ethnographer, took them for ants - the constancy of perception was disturbed.

Impact on the perception of expectations and assumptions. Another principle of perception: a person perceives the world depending on what he expects to perceive. The process of selecting a figure is influenced by people's assumptions about what may be presented to them. Much more often than we imagine ourselves, we see what we expect to see, hear what we expect to hear, etc. will feel like the softness of rubber as long as the subject is convinced that the given object is a rubber toy. If an image is presented that can equally well be understood as the number 13 or as the letter B, then the subjects without any doubt perceive this sign as 13 if it appears in a series of numbers, and as a letter B if it appears in a series of letters. ...

A person easily fills in the gaps in the incoming information and isolates the message from the noise if he assumes or knows in advance what will be presented to him. Errors that arise in perception are very often caused by disappointed expectations. Let us present the subject for a split second with an image of a face without eyes - as a rule, he will see a face with eyes and will confidently prove that the image really had eyes. We clearly hear an unintelligible word in the noise if it is clear from the context. In the experiment, the subjects were shown slides so defocused that real image identification was impossible. Each subsequent presentation slightly improved focusing. It turned out that the subjects who, at the first presentation, put forward erroneous hypotheses about what was shown to them, could not correctly identify the image even with such an image quality when no one makes mistakes at all. If you show on the screen 4-5 times in a row two circles with different diameters, each time on the left - with a diameter of, for example, 22 mm, and on the right - with a diameter of 28 mm, and then present two equal circles with a diameter of 25 mm, then the overwhelming most of the subjects already involuntarily expect to see unequal circles, and therefore do not see (do not realize) them as equal. (This effect will be even more pronounced if a person with closed eyes first put balls of different volume or weight in his left and right hands, and then put equal balls.)

The Georgian psychologist Z. I. Khodzhava presented to the subjects who knew German and Russian a list of German words. At the end of this list there was a word that could be read either as a meaningless combination of letters written in Latin letters, or as a meaningful word written in Cyrillic. All subjects continued to read this combination of letters in German (i.e., they were classified as meaningless, but German words), without noticing at all a meaningful version of its reading as a Russian word. American J. Bagby showed children through a stereoscope transparencies so that different eyes saw different images. The subjects (Mexicans and Americans) viewed two images at once, one typical of American culture (baseball game, blonde girl, etc.), and the other typical of Mexican culture (bullfight, black-haired girl, etc.). ). The corresponding photographs were similar in shape, contour of the main masses, structure and distribution of light and shadows. Although some subjects noticed that they were presented with two pictures, most saw only one - the one that is more typical of their experience.

So, a person perceives information depending on his expectations. But if his expectations were not met, then he tries to find some explanation for this, and therefore his consciousness pays most attention to the new and unexpected. A sharp, unexpected sound causes the head to turn in the direction of the sound, even in newly born babies. Preschool children take longer to consider new images, and not those with which they were previously introduced, or choose new toys for play, and not those that were shown to them in advance. All people have a longer reaction time to rare and unexpected signals than to frequent and expected ones, and the time to recognize unexpected signals is also longer. Consciousness, in other words, works longer on rare and unexpected signals. A new and varied environment generally increases mental stress.

Immutable information is not held in consciousness, therefore a person is not able to perceive and be aware of unchanging information for a long time. Unchanging information quickly enough becomes expected and even against the wishes of the subjects escapes from their consciousness. A stabilized image that does not change in brightness and color (for example, with the help of contact lenses, to which a light source is attached, thus moving with the eyes), with all the effort of the subject, ceases to be recognized already in 1–3 s after the start of presentation. A constant stimulus of moderate intensity, acting on the ear (constant or strictly periodic noise) or on the skin (clothes, watches), very soon ceases to be noticed. With prolonged fixation, the background color loses its color and begins to look gray. Close attention to any unchanging or evenly swaying object disrupts the normal flow of consciousness and contributes to the emergence of the so-called altered states - meditative and hypnotic. There is a special technique of hypnotizing by fixing a point on the ceiling or wall, as well as fixing the gaze on an object located at a distance of about 25 cm from the subject's eyes.

Repeated repetition of the same word or group of words leads to a subjective feeling of loss of the meaning of these words. Say a word out loud many times - sometimes a dozen repetitions are enough to create a specific feeling of loss of the meaning of this word. Many mystical techniques are based on this technique: shamanic rituals, the repetition of verbal formulas ("Lord, have mercy on me a sinner" in Orthodoxy, "la ilaha il-la-l-lahu" (that is, "there is no god but Allah") in Islam), etc. Repeated pronunciation of such phrases leads not only to the loss of their meaning, but also, as the Eastern mystics say, to a complete "devastation of consciousness", which contributes to the emergence of special mystical states. Continuous talking by the doctor repeating the same formulas promotes hypnotic suggestion. The monotonous architectural environment has a soporific effect on people.

Automated actions (walking, reading, playing musical instruments, swimming, etc.), due to their monotony, are also not perceived by the person performing this action, they are not retained in consciousness. A number of complex tasks requiring the greatest precision and muscular coordination (ballet dancing, boxing, marksmanship, rapid typing) are successfully performed only when they are brought to automatism and therefore are practically not perceived by consciousness. The "effect of mental satiety" was discovered: the subject is not able to perform a monotonous task without variations for even a short time and is forced to change - sometimes imperceptibly for himself - the task he is solving.

With a paucity of external influences, a person develops phenomena similar to fatigue: erroneous actions increase, emotional tone decreases, drowsiness develops, etc. In 1956, perhaps the most famous experiment with a prolonged lack of information (sensory isolation) was carried out: $ 20 per day (which at that time was a very significant amount), the volunteer subjects lay on the bed, their hands were inserted into special cardboard tubes so that there were as few tactile stimuli as possible, they were wearing special glasses that allowed only diffused light to pass through, auditory the stimuli were masked by the continuous noise of the air conditioner. The subjects were fed, watered, they could take care of their toilet as needed, but the rest of the time they were as immobile as possible. The hopes of the subjects that they would have a good rest in such conditions did not come true. The participants in the experiment could not concentrate on anything - their thoughts eluded them. More than 80% of the subjects became victims of visual hallucinations: the walls were shaking, the floor rotated, the body and consciousness split in two, the eyes became unbearably painful from the bright light, etc. None of them lasted more than six days, and most demanded to stop the experiment after three day.

The role of meaning in the selection of a figure. A special role in the selection of a figure is played by its meaningfulness for the perceiving person. A doctor examining an X-ray, a chess player studying a new position in the opening, a hunter recognizing birds by flying from distances incredible for an ordinary person - they all react not to meaningless pictures and see them as completely different from people who cannot read an X-ray. play chess or hunt. Pointless situations are difficult and painful for all people. Man, on the other hand, is trying to give meaning to everything. We generally only perceive what we understand. If a person suddenly hears the walls talking, then in most cases he will not believe that the walls can really talk, and will look for some reasonable explanation for this: the presence of a hidden person, a tape recorder, etc., or even decide that lost his mind.

Meaningful words are recognized much faster and more accurately than meaningless sets of letters when presented visually. In an experiment with a shaded message, when different text is fed to different ears, it turned out that out of two messages the person himself always chooses the one that has some meaning that he understands, and as already mentioned, he practically does not notice the message behind which he no need to follow. But the most unexpected thing: if a meaningful message is fed first to one ear, then to the other, then the subject, despite all his efforts to strictly follow the message given to one specific ear, is forced to switches his attention to a meaningful message, whichever ear is fed. In part, this effect can be demonstrated when visual information is presented. Please read the following text, paying attention only to the words in bold:

parallelepiped eyes racer perceive cruise surrounding information inverted horseman. However, we over and over see the world stupidity in normal table orientation gardener. If you put on automobile glasses, helicopter flipping falling jack image, clam then after boots long WORKOUT please HUMAN astronomy ABLE deep sea AGAIN cleverly SEE THE WORLD sail SO, Friday HOW WE HIM Thursday HAPPENED curdled milk USUALLY root SEE.

When meaningful text transitions from one font to another, as a rule, there is a feeling of failure, and sometimes an attempt to read the text written in a different font.

Making sense of the world has a lot to do with the use of language. Therefore, our perception of the world changes depending on what words we call what we see. People who speak different languages perceive the world slightly differently, because different languages themselves describe this world slightly differently. It is no coincidence that Russian artists paint spring in the form of a charming girl (the word "spring" in Russian is feminine), and German artists - in the form of a handsome young man (in accordance with the gender of the word "spring" in German). Russian-speaking subjects, for example, are more likely to distinguish between blue and light blue in their perception than English-speaking subjects, who use the same word "blue" to denote these two colors.

Perception as a hypothesis testing process... The huge number of mistakes that we make in perception are not due to the fact that we see or hear something incorrectly - our senses work almost perfectly, but because we misunderstand it. However, it is thanks to our ability to comprehend the perceived that we make discoveries and perceive much more than what is perceived by our senses. Past experiences and foresight of the future enhance the information we receive with our senses. We use this information to test hypotheses about what is in front of us. Perception– it is an active process of obtaining information to test hypotheses about the world around us.

No wonder that perception is closely related to movement, action. Obviously, movement is necessary to get the information you want. Any object must come into view to be seen; you need to pick it up in order to feel it, and so on. Although the mechanisms governing such movements are very complex, we will not consider them here. However, the role of movement in perception is not only (and even not so much) in this. First of all, let us note the micromovements of the sense organs. They contribute to the retention in consciousness of unchanging stimuli, which, as we remember, tend to quickly disappear from consciousness. In humans, the points of skin sensitivity are constantly shifting: tremor of the fingers, hands, trunk, which does not allow stabilizing muscle sensations: involuntary micromovements of the eye do not make it possible to keep the gaze at a given point, etc. All this contributes to such a change in external stimulation so that the perceived remains in consciousness, but at the same time the constancy of perceived objects was not disturbed.

Rice. 20. The illusion of the magnitude of the visible object: the plan of the Ames room

However, the main role of action in perception is to test emerging hypotheses. Let's consider an example. American psychologist A. Ames designed a special room (it is called the "Ames room"), the far wall of which is not located at right angles to the side walls, as is usually the case, but at a very acute angle to one wall and, accordingly, at an obtuse angle to the other ( see Fig. 20). Thanks to the false perspective created, among other things, by the patterns on the walls, the observer sitting at the viewing device perceived this room as rectangular. If an object or a stranger is placed in the far (beveled) sharp corner of such a room, they seem to be sharply reduced in size. This illusion persists even if the observer is told about the true shape of the room. However, as soon as the observer performs some action in this room (touch the wall with a stick, throw the ball into the opposite wall), then the illusion disappears - the room begins to be seen in accordance with its real form. (The role of past experience is evidenced by the fact that an illusion does not arise at all if the observer sees a person well known to him, for example, a husband or wife, son, etc.) So, a person forms a hypothesis about what he perceives (for example, sees or hears), and with the help of his actions tests the validity of this hypothesis. Our actions correct our hypotheses, and with them our perceptions.

Studies show that the inability to make movements does not allow learning to perceive the world. However, such experiments that destroy the process of perception, of course, have not been carried out on children. Kittens and baby monkeys were convenient objects for the experimenters. Here is a description of one such experiment. Newborn kittens were in the dark most of the time, where they could move freely. In the light, they were placed in special baskets that rotated like a carousel. A kitten, in whose basket holes were made for paws, and which, thus, could rotate the carousel, subsequently did not have visual defects. The kitten, which sat passively in the basket and could not make any movements in it, subsequently made serious mistakes when distinguishing the shape of objects.

In this section, we focused on the activity of perception as a mental process. A number of important but particular issues (for example, the perception of time, movement, depth, speech, color, etc.) remained outside the scope of our consideration. Those wishing to familiarize themselves with the psychology of perception in more detail should refer to the special literature.

By itself, the real manifested world is the same, regardless of how different forms of life perceive it. But all kinds of creatures and even individual individuals, except for the basis of this world, which is the same for all forms of life, perceive mainly those facets that correspond to their aspirations and needs. If we are talking about a person, then we must take into account his worldview, which largely determines not only the spectrum of preferential perception of some facets of the reality of the world, but also the attitude towards these facets. At the same time, a person is sure that his perception of the world and his attitude to this world are adequate to the circumstances. And even if you try to explain to him that he distortedly perceives reality, then, most likely, nothing will come of it - he will not accept the explanation, because it does not fit into his worldview logic. Thus, the main reason lies in his worldview, which each person has his own map of assessing the significance of the world. The fact is that each significance, for a person who perceives it, has its own individual sound, hence the worldview, which includes the reflected significance of this world, can be compared with an orchestra, which for each person not only differs in its instruments, but also in its own individual pieces that he prefers to perform. And, besides, the same significance for different people does not have the same value, which in many ways is also related to the worldview. Hence, we can conclude that the same manifested world, which has certain values, is perceived and evaluated by different people differently. And depending on the goals, the realization of which they devote their lives, the same objects or the relationship between them will be perceived and evaluated by people not in the same way. And, in addition, the worldview can be compared with puzzles containing elements that have certain colors and shapes, then each person's worldview is his own individual puzzle, which develops into his own individual picture.

Each significance of the worldview sounds at its own frequency and a person, depending on this, strives, mainly for what is in tune with him. He will perceive the reality of the world from the side that is consonant with his worldview, and will act in the external world as his inner sound allows him. Therefore, each person has his own truth, even a criminal. And not all criminals will agree that their truth is wrong and that they are criminals. In order for them to see that their truth is defective, it is necessary that in their worldview there is that part that is free or independent of their truth. And only from the position of this free part, they can realize that they are wrong. But this small part can be so insignificant that a person, even knowing that he is doing something destructive, will not be able to resist his individual destructive truth. But more often it happens that a person realizes the destructiveness of his truth from the standpoint of the mind, which knows the generally accepted assessments of the significance of the world and can even argue convincingly for listeners about their values, but when the time comes to act, the person is at the mercy of his worldview. Thus, a worldview is not the sum of information perceived by the mind as a result of training, or notations, or soul-saving conversations conducted with a person, because the worldview is rooted in the subconscious. Then how is the worldview formed? First, a worldview must necessarily have a genetic basis, and when it is not enough, the idea of exclusivity can be taken as a basis. Each person, if not explicitly, openly, then at a deeper level, considers himself or wants to be exceptional, even if not in everything, then at least in something. Well, then a myth unfolds, confirming his exclusivity, which confirms either the exclusivity of an idea that a person follows, or the exclusivity of a goal to which a person devotes his whole life, or the exclusivity of a person himself, for example, in connection with his social status.

When we talk about the genetic basis of the worldview, then we are talking about the hereditary predispositions of a person, on the basis of which ideas - carriers of the meaning of his life - can be formed in the future. A person's worldview always has its own history and its heroes, who, when forming a worldview, are an example of both relationships with external reality and attitude towards oneself. This story usually consists of two parts - his personal and the history of his people. And its truthfulness or tendentiousness is not at all important, it is important that it brings up in a person his certain significance, which represents him as a non-trivial person.

The history of any nation, and its own personal history of each person, is multifaceted. But very often, when describing their history, historians take its best edge and even exaggerate it, and present the still life they received as a true story. And if it lacks the necessary greatness and heroism, then myths are taken to help, for example, the biblical Old Testament. At the same time, when describing the histories of other peoples, they consider them, relying on all sorts of negative examples, and also exaggerate them, and an example of this can be the times of the reign of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, and many other examples.

A formed worldview is not only glasses through which a person looks at the reality of the world and his place in it, but it also determines the configuration of a person's personality, his creative potential and the possibilities of his spiritual growth.

Rice. 18. Grouping by proximity factor

If the subject is given different messages to the left and right ears and asked to repeat one of them aloud, then the subject easily copes with this task. But at this time he is not aware of another message, does not remember it, cannot say, what was discussed there, or even in what language it was spoken. At best, he can tell whether there was music or speech, whether a female or a male voice spoke. Psychologists call an unrepeatable message in such an experiment shaded; it is, as it were, in the shadow, in the background. Nevertheless, the subject somehow reacts to this message. He, for example, immediately realizes the appearance of his name in him. Here is one experiment to support the perception of the shadowed message. The repeated message contains sentences containing homonymous words, for example: “He found the KEY in the clearing”, and the shaded message for some subjects includes the word “WATER”, and for other subjects - “DOOR”. Then the subjects are asked to recognize from the many sentences presented to them those that they repeated. Among the proposals presented there are the following: "He found a spring in a clearing" and "He found a master key in a clearing." It turned out that the first subjects confidently recognize the sentence about the spring, and the second ones equally confidently recognize the sentence about the master key. And, of course, the subjects of both groups could not reproduce anything from the shaded message, that is, they did not remember anything about it.

Rice. 19. Figure of Rubin: two black profiles on a white background or a white vase on a black background

As a figure, it is usually distinguished that which has some meaning for a person, which is associated with past experience, assumptions and expectations of the perceiving person, with his intentions and desires. This has been shown in many experimental studies, but specific results have significantly changed the way we look at nature and the process of perception.

The law of the aftereffect of the figure and the background. Perception constancy. A person prefers to perceive (be aware) of what he has already seen. This manifests itself in a series of laws. The law of the aftereffect of the figure and the background states: what a person once perceived as a figure tends to aftereffect, that is, to be re-singled out as a figure; what was once perceived as background tends to continue to be perceived as background. Let's consider some experiments demonstrating the manifestation of this law.

The subjects were presented with meaningless black-and-white images. (Such images are easy to make for anyone: on a small piece of white paper, you just need to draw some meaningless stripes with black ink so that the ratio of the volumes of black and white on the piece of paper is approximately the same.) In most cases, the subjects perceived the white field as a figure, and black - as a background, that is, they saw the image as white on black. However, with some effort, they could perceive the presented image and how black shape on a white background. In the preliminary ("teaching") series of the experiment, the subjects were presented with several hundred such images, each for about 4 s. At the same time, they were told what color image (white or black) they should see as a figure. The subjects tried “with all their might” to see exactly the image as a figure to which the experimenter was pointing. In the "testing" series of the experiment, which was carried out a few days later, they were presented with both new drawings and images from the previous series, and they should have, without any effort, perceive the presented as it is perceived by itself, and inform which field - white or black - see as a figure. It turned out that the subjects tended to perceive the old images as they did in the training series (although they generally did not even recognize these images), that is, to re-select the same figure and not select the same background.

We present to the subject for a fraction of a second a set of stimuli (these can be images or words, sounds or readings of the device, etc.). Its task is to identify the presented stimuli. Some of them he recognizes unmistakably. In some, he makes mistakes, that is, he selects the wrong (from the point of view of instructions) figure. It turns out that upon repeated presentation of stimuli in which he had previously made a mistake, the subject more often than accidentally makes mistakes again. Usually he repeats the same mistakes that he made earlier (“the figure will follow”), sometimes he makes different mistakes in a row (“background will follow”). The phenomenon of repetition of errors of perception, found in different experiments, is especially unexpected. Indeed, in order to repeat the error upon presentation of the same stimulus, the subject must first recognize that the presented stimulus is the same, remember that in response to its presentation he has already made such and such a mistake, that is, in essence, it is correct. recognize and then repeat the mistake.

The Georgian psychologist Z. I. Khodzhava presented to the subjects who knew German and Russian a list of German words. At the end of this list there was a word that could be read either as a meaningless combination of letters written in Latin letters, or as a meaningful word written in Cyrillic. All the subjects continued to read this combination of letters in German (that is, they referred to the class of meaningless but German words), without noticing at all a meaningful version of its reading as a Russian word. American J. Bagby showed children through a stereoscope transparencies so that different eyes saw different images. The subjects (Mexicans and Americans) viewed two images at once, one typical of American culture (baseball game, blonde girl, etc.), and the other typical of Mexican culture (bullfight, black-haired girl, etc.). ). The corresponding photographs were similar in shape, contour of the main masses, structure and distribution of light and shadows. Although some subjects noticed that they were presented with two pictures, most saw only one - the one that is more typical of their experience.

So, a person perceives information depending on his expectations. But if his expectations were not met, then he tries to find some explanation for this, and therefore his consciousness pays most attention to the new and unexpected. A sharp, unexpected sound causes the head to turn in the direction of the sound, even in newly born babies. Preschool children take longer to look at new images, and not those with which they were previously introduced, or choose new toys for play, and not those that were shown to them in advance. All people have a longer reaction time to rare and unexpected signals than to frequent and expected ones, and the time to recognize unexpected signals is also longer. Consciousness, in other words, works longer on rare and unexpected signals. A new and varied environment generally increases mental stress.

Immutable information is not held in consciousness, therefore a person is not able to perceive and be aware of unchanging information for a long time. Unchanging information quickly enough becomes expected and even against the wishes of the subjects escapes from their consciousness. A stabilized image that does not change in brightness and color (for example, with the help of contact lenses, to which a light source is attached, thus moving with the eyes), with all the effort of the subject, ceases to be recognized already in 1–3 s after the start of presentation. A constant stimulus of moderate intensity, acting on the ear (constant or strictly periodic noise) or on the skin (clothes, watches), very soon ceases to be noticed. With prolonged fixation, the background color loses its color and begins to look gray. Close attention to any unchanging or evenly swaying object disrupts the normal course of consciousness and contributes to the emergence of the so-called altered states - meditative and hypnotic. There is a special technique of hypnotizing by fixing a point on the ceiling or wall, as well as fixing the gaze on an object located at a distance of about 25 cm from the subject's eyes.

Repeated repetition of the same word or group of words leads to a subjective feeling of loss of the meaning of these words. Say a word out loud many times - sometimes a dozen repetitions are enough to create a specific feeling of loss of the meaning of this word. Many mystical techniques are built on this technique: shamanic rituals, the repetition of verbal formulas ("Lord, have mercy on me a sinner" in Orthodoxy, "la ilaha il-la-l-lahu" (that is, "there is no god but Allah") in Islam), etc. Repeated pronunciation of such phrases leads not only to the loss of their meaning, but also, as the Eastern mystics say, to a complete “devastation of consciousness”, which contributes to the emergence of special mystical states. Continuous talking by the doctor repeating the same formulas promotes hypnotic suggestion. The monotonous-monotonous architectural environment has a soporific effect on people.

With a paucity of external influences, a person develops phenomena similar to fatigue: erroneous actions increase, emotional tone decreases, drowsiness develops, etc. In 1956, perhaps the most famous experiment with a prolonged lack of information (sensory isolation) was carried out: $ 20 per day (which at that time was a very significant amount) the volunteer subjects lay on the bed, their hands were inserted into special cardboard tubes so that there were as few tactile stimuli as possible, they were put on special glasses that allowed only diffused light to pass through, hearing the stimuli were masked by the continuous noise of the air conditioner. The subjects were fed, watered, they could take care of their toilet as needed, but the rest of the time they were as immobile as possible. The hopes of the subjects that they would have a good rest in such conditions did not come true. The participants in the experiment could not concentrate on anything - their thoughts eluded them. More than 80% of the subjects became victims of visual hallucinations: the walls were shaking, the floor rotated, the body and consciousness split in two, the eyes became unbearably painful from the bright light, etc. None of them lasted more than six days, and most demanded to stop the experiment after three day.

Meaningful words are recognized much faster and more accurately than meaningless sets of letters when presented visually. In an experiment with a shaded message, when different text is fed to different ears, it turned out that out of two messages, the person himself always chooses the one that has some meaning to him, and as already mentioned, he practically does not notice the message behind which he no need to follow. But the most unexpected thing: if a meaningful message is fed first to one ear, then to the other, then the subject, despite all his efforts to strictly follow the message given to one specific ear, is forced to switches his attention to a meaningful message, whichever ear is fed. In part, this effect can be demonstrated when visual information is presented. Please read the following text, paying attention only to the words in bold:

When meaningful text transitions from one font to another, as a rule, there is a feeling of failure, and sometimes an attempt to read the text written in a different font.

Perception as a hypothesis testing process... The huge number of mistakes that we make in perception are not due to the fact that we see or hear something incorrectly - our senses work almost perfectly, but because we misunderstand it. However, it is thanks to our ability to comprehend the perceived that we make discoveries and perceive much more than what is perceived by our senses. Past experiences and foresight of the future enhance the information we receive with our senses. We use this information to test hypotheses about what is in front of us. Perception – it is an active process of obtaining information to test hypotheses about the world around us.

Rice. 20. The illusion of the magnitude of the visible object: the plan of the Ames room

However, the main role of action in perception is to test emerging hypotheses. Let's consider an example. American psychologist A. Ames designed a special room (it is called the "Ames room"), the far wall of which is not located at right angles to the side walls, as is usually the case, but at a very acute angle to one wall and, accordingly, at an obtuse angle to the other ( see Fig. 20). Thanks to the false perspective created, among other things, by the patterns on the walls, the observer sitting at the viewing device perceived this room as rectangular. If an object or a stranger is placed in the far (beveled) sharp corner of such a room, they seem to be sharply reduced in size. This illusion persists even if the observer is told about the true shape of the room. However, as soon as the observer performs some action in this room (touch the wall with a stick, throw the ball into the opposite wall), the illusion disappears - the room begins to be seen in accordance with its real form. (The role of past experience is evidenced by the fact that an illusion does not arise at all if the observer sees a person well known to him, for example, a husband or wife, son, etc.) So, a person forms a hypothesis about what he perceives (for example, sees or hears), and with the help of his actions tests the validity of this hypothesis. Our actions correct our hypotheses, and with them our perceptions.

HOW A PERSON REMEMBERS

A person is not able to keep in consciousness even a small set of signs. He is usually able to reproduce without error after one presentation of only no more than seven numbers, letters, syllables, words, names of objects, etc. Even a seven-digit phone number can not be immediately remembered by everyone. Why is the result of our attempts to remember something the first time so deplorable? In fact, the answer to this question has already been given: consciousness, as shown in the previous paragraph, is not capable of holding invariable information. This means that a person usually forgets such information that needs to be kept unchanged in consciousness. Therefore, paradoxical as it may seem, in order to keep information in consciousness, it is necessary to change it all the time.

The brain automatically remembers any information. If this information does not change, it just as automatically leaves consciousness. Therefore, when something remains in consciousness, then, generally speaking, it happens in violation of the normal mental process. A person's activity in resisting this normal process of leaving the consciousness of unchanging information includes attempts, sometimes painful, to keep information in consciousness by changing it and specific actions of the subject aimed at returning the signs that have left him to consciousness.

Mnemonics... There are various mnemonic devices, which contribute to better memorization of information and allow you to increase the amount of information memorized from the first presentation. They are aimed at prompting the subject to artificially change the stimulus material, but so that these changes do not nevertheless lead to errors in reproduction. Let's take a look at some of these techniques.

Creation of images when memorizing words. Upon presentation of the first pair of words, a visual image is created - an imaginary situation that includes both of these words. When the pair of words "puppy, bike" is presented, one can imagine, for example, a cheerful puppy riding a bike and energetically twisting the pedals. Let the next word be "cigar" - now in an imaginary picture the puppy is pedaling with a cigar in his mouth. The new word "geography" is introduced: a geography textbook appears on the trunk of a bicycle with a world map on the cover. "Computer" - the entire imaginary picture is placed on the display screen. "Snow Maiden" - the puppy immediately acquires a long braid and a silver fur coat of the New Year's character - etc. This method allows you to significantly increase the number of memorized words. Please note: the creation of images does not decrease, but increases the amount of material to be memorized. For example, the constructed image of a puppy riding a bicycle can equally well be applied to different pairs of words: "puppy - wheel", "dog - bike", "paw - pedal", etc. Therefore, the subject should still not remember only the imaginary picture he created, but also the words presented to him.

Mental placement of objects presented for memorization in space. Let's say you are sitting in a classroom and have to memorize a list of words. Try to place the items indicated by these words in the audience space. An important note: place them in the most unexpected places and so that during playback, looking around the audience, you could notice them (for example, it is better not to put anything on the desk). So, let the word "steak" be presented to you. Where do we put it? For example, we can hang it to a light bulb to keep it warm. The next word is "book". We put it on top of an open door - let it fall on the one who opens the door. "Crocodile" - oh, our crocodile will lie on the windowsill. Let's put the "plane" in the corner. In another corner we will place a "cactus", and in the middle between them we will place a "flute", etc. Again, we note the increase in the volume of memorization when mentally placing the stimulus material in space - now, after all, it is necessary to remember not only the stimulus material itself, but also where it is posted.

(By the way, try to remember, without rereading, all 12 words mentioned as presented as words for memorization when describing the techniques of creating images and placing objects in space. Did you manage to remember at least 10?)

Transcoding. The easiest way to use this technique is to memorize a large number of binary digits. If you can quickly convert binary digits (0 and 1) to octal, then memorizing 7-8 octal digits will lead to memorizing more than two dozen binary digits. When memorizing a number of decimal numbers, they can be interpreted as known to you dates, phone numbers or apartments. For example, you need to memorize a row of numbers 4125073698. Let's recode this row, say, like this: 41 – year of the beginning of the war; 25 December is Catholic Christmas, and 07 January - Orthodox; 369 Is 123 times 3, and at the end 8 - two in a cube.

Such recoding can be done when memorizing a set of words. Surely the reader still remembers the mnemonic rule for memorizing the seven colors of the rainbow: Every Hunter Wants to Know Where the Pheasant Sits. There are similar constructions for memorizing seven notes of a musical scale. A similar technique can be used to memorize formulas. For example, suppose you need to remember the formula:

Let's replace letters with words, for example, like this: strangled. Alas! Leading ... Don't like the gloominess of this design or the lack of a minus in it? Please another option: amazing you, dear, thoughtfulness ... Is there a lack of integrals in the verbal description? No problem. Add words like: interesting, intelligent. Remember the formula? Just in case: double the increase by blowing. You won't be able to forget her for a long time now ...

Among the mnemonic methods, one stands out, which is intuitively used by almost all people, not only in experimental conditions, but also in everyday life. It's about repetition. Repetition is a translation of the material presented for memorization into the memorizing person's own speech, that is, a change in the material, but such that does not knowingly violate the reproduction. Repetition contributes to better reproduction, but nevertheless it is not the most effective method of memorization, since repeated repetition itself, as already noted, contributes to the escape of the text from consciousness.

Phenomenal memory... In psychology, many cases are described when people possessed the so-called phenomenal memory - the ability to reproduce a huge (maybe unlimited) amount of information. Phenomenal memory is found not only in mentally retarded people (although, let me remind you, this phenomenon is most typical for them), but also in many famous personalities in history. There are legends about the unique possibilities of the memory of Julius Caesar and Napoleon, Mozart and Gauss, the chess player Alekhine and the adventurer Count Saint-Germain. One of the most striking and studied examples is the mnemonist S. D. Shereshevsky, a book about whom the famous Russian psychologist A. R. Luria wrote. Psychologists did not find in Shereshevsky any restrictions either on the amount of memorization or on the time of storing information. For example, from the first presentation Shereshevsky remembered a long stanza of Dante's Divine Comedy in an unknown Italian language, which he easily repeated during an unexpected check ... 15 years later. It is not surprising that Shereshevsky was worried about the question, not how to memorize better, but how to learn to forget.

Some of the people with phenomenal memory used mnemonic techniques for memorization. Shereshevsky, for example, demonstrating his amazing abilities in the circus, resorted to placement in space along the familiar Moscow street. (It is curious that he once made a mistake: he put the object named to him in the shadow and during playback, mentally walking along this street again, he did not notice it.) But usually, with phenomenal preservation, no work of consciousness is done on the material to be memorized. Scottish mathematician A. Atkin in 1933 read twice a list of 25 unrelated words and ... reproduced it without errors 27 years later! The well-known musicologist I. I. Sollertinsky could flip through the book and then reproduce the text of any page of this book unmistakably. Sollertinsky did not even read the book, the pages of which he reproduced. It is clear that such preservation cannot be explained by any mnemonic methods. In general, people with phenomenal memory, as a rule, do not carry out any information transformations. When, at one of his public speeches, Shereshevsky was asked to memorize a number of numbers: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, etc. up to 57, he did it without even noticing a simple sequence of numbers. “If they just gave me the alphabet, I wouldn’t notice this and would honestly memorize,” Shereshevsky admitted.

With phenomenal memory, signs are reproduced without visible effort - with the same ease with which we, looking at a house or tree, without any conscious effort, learn that it is a house, a tree. The problem is that none of us knows how to deliberately imprint memorized information into our memory. We know how to memorize, but we don't know how we can. Nevertheless, each of us constantly controls the process of memorization with our consciousness: what if I am mistaken? What if I forget something important? One gets the impression that people with phenomenal memory are distinguished primarily by the fact that they are able, like children, not to put the process of preservation and retrieval from memory under the control of consciousness.

Figure and background when retrieved from memory. The hero of the famous story by A. P. Chekhov recalled his “horse” surname for a long time, until he remembered Ovsov. But at the same time, he remembered that other options (Kobylin, Zherebtsov, Loshadinin, Bulanov, etc.) did not fit. As always, Chekhov is accurate in his observation. We all know that one forgotten word or forgotten surname of one of our acquaintances is experienced differently than another forgotten word or forgotten surname of another acquaintance. We often remember more than we can remember. What we consciously extract from memory (figure) is always accompanied by something else that we are not clearly aware of (background).

Try to memorize a list of 10 words from one reading and then, without looking at the text, write down all the words you memorized on a piece of paper in any order:

chicken hair act news pacifier bump jail jam keychain gate

Don't be surprised if you memorized seven or a little more words (five to nine) - this is usually the case. But it is unlikely (though possible) that you were able to write down all ten words. Are your attempts to remember the rest failing? Do you feel like you remember more?

Then read the list of 20 words, which includes 10 words you already know and 10 new ones. Add to what you have already reproduced the words that you recognized in this list as words from the previous list. In the overwhelming majority of cases, at least one word can be attributed to each! Let's hope you can do it too. Here's a checklist:

prison hoof pitcher gate shoe dove nipple dumbass pear jam pipe bump chicken keychain ram ambush news hair sailor act

So, most of the subjects are able to recognize previously not reproduced words from the first list. This means that they remembered them even when they could not reproduce! What we remember, but do not reproduce, acts in our minds as a background to what we manage to reproduce.

The famous researcher of memory G. Ebbinghaus created a peculiar method of measuring the volume of what is somehow given to consciousness, but which nevertheless is not reproduced - the method of saving. As you know, a long series of signs (numbers, letters, syllables, words, etc.), far exceeding the limit of seven signs, the subject can memorize only after a few repetitions. However, after a long time after memorization, the subject is usually unable to reproduce any of the elements of the previously memorized series. No wonder, we say, he completely forgot it. But is it? Ebbinghaus invites the subjects to memorize the same sequence again. And it turns out that for the repeated memorization of a supposedly forgotten row, a significantly smaller number of presentations is often required than if this row had not been memorized earlier. Let a person be sure that he does not remember anything, in fact, he may well still keep something (“save”, in the terminology of Ebbinghaus) in his memory. Even when our consciousness forgets, it actually remembers something from the forgotten, it remembers what it doesn’t seem to remember.

Here is an example of one study using the savings method. The child, who was only five months old at the beginning of the experiment, was read aloud three passages in ancient Greek every day for three months. Three new passages were read to him for the next three months. This continued until the baby was three years old. Later, he never learned ancient Greek. At the age of 8, 14 and 18, he was again presented each time with a different part of these passages for memorization, along with new texts he had never heard before. At 8 years old, he learned old texts 30% faster than new ones, at 14 years old - by 8%, although at 18 years old the differences were no longer noticeable.

When studying the process of memorization, one can also find the aftereffects of the figure and the background. Even Ebbinghaus himself established a law that now bears his name: the number of repeated presentations required to memorize the entire row grows much faster than the volume of the presented row. For example: in one presentation the subject correctly reproduces 6–7 meaningless syllables, however, to reproduce 12 syllables he will need 16 presentations, and for 24 syllables - 44 presentations; if the subject memorizes 8 digits from one presentation, then to memorize 9 digits he already needs 3-4 presentations. In this case (the aftereffect of the figure) at the next presentation, first of all those signs are reproduced that have already been reproduced at the previous presentation. But this also means that previously unreproduced characters continue to stubbornly not be reproduced at subsequent presentations (background aftereffect). Thus, Ebbinghaus's law is a consequence of both the figure aftereffect and the background aftereffect.

Let the person reproduce after one presentation a row of 10-14 characters. He will reproduce some signs of this series correctly, and some will be missed, "he will not remember." After that, he is presented with the next row, containing both new characters and characters from the previous row (correctly reproduced and missed). It turns out that in this case, the effects of the aftereffect of the figure and the background are observed. A person will remember, first of all, those signs that he just correctly reproduced (the probability of reproducing these signs is greater than the probability of reproducing new signs). Worst of all, he will remember those signs that he just forgot when presenting the previous row (the probability of reproducing previously missed signs is less than the likelihood of reproducing new signs). The error of substitution is also repeated when, instead of one sign, the other is stably reproduced. All this looks incredible: in order to repeat the omission error, one must be able to recognize previously missed characters. In other words, in order not to reproduce some signs again, they must be remembered! But the most striking thing: if the subject did not reproduce any of the signs, and this sign in the next row was not presented to him, then the subject will more often than accidentally reproduce this previously missed sign by mistake. Similarly: the forgotten "horse surname" comes into our consciousness not when we intensely remember it, but at the moment when we do not think about it at all.

The process of retrieving from memory is very similar to the process of perception. Of the huge amount of data stored in the brain during recollection, it is necessary to realize only a small part of this data - a figure, while retaining the rest of the information as a poorly distinguishable background. It is not surprising that the main factors influencing the perception of the figure also affect the extraction of it from memory.