“Researchers caused a stir with their study of misperceptions of randomness in basketball. The ‘fact’ that players occasionally acquire a ‘hot’ hand is generally accepted by players, coaches, and fans. A player sinks three or four baskets in a row and you cannot help forming the causal judgment that this player is now hot, with a temporarily increased propensity to score. Analysis of thousands of sequences of shots led to a disappointing conclusion: there is no such thing as a hot hand in professional basketball, either in shooting from the field or scoring from the foul line. Of course, some players are more accurate than others, but the sequence of successes and missed shots satisfies all tests of randomness. The ‘hot’ hand is a massive and widespread cognitive illusion.”
Perception: the neurophysiological processes, including memory, by which an organism becomes aware of and interprets external stimuli. (Oxford)
Perceptions emerge as a result of "reverberations" of "signals" between different levels of the sensory hierarchy, even across different senses. The mechanisms of perception are mainly involved in extracting statistical correlations from the world in order to create a model that is temporarily useful. (Ramachandran, 56-59) Perception… differs from “sensation” by the consciousness of farther facts associated with the object of the sensation. (James2, 2) A skill… that we get better at over the first few years of our lives and beyond. Through experience, we learn to not just detect objects in the world but to categorize them into types of things. When we perceive a thing we do more than just process its sensory attributes—we compare them to our memories of past experiences to categorize and recognize it. (Mitchell, 139) The firing pattern of both “mirror” and ‘canonical’ neurons shows clearly that perception and action are not separated in the brain. (Iacoboni, 14) Human perception lags behind reality by at least a tenth of a second, probably more. (Graziano, 5)
Dreaming: vivid and conscious hallucinations that feel as real as life itself. They primarily occur during rapid-eye-movement sleep. (Koch, 333) A form of visual imagery experienced during REM sleep. (Coon, 82) A mental phenomenon occurring during sleep in which images, emotions, and thoughts are experienced with a sense of reality. (NCIt) A series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep which are dissociated from the usual stream of consciousness of the waking state. (MeSH) As postulated by Francis Crick of the Salk Institute in San Diego, and his colleagues, dreaming acts to prune out connections between cells in the brain that have developed during the day, and constitutes a type of ‘reverse learning’ to get rid of useless information. The validity of this hypothesis remains controversial. (Leschziner, 2)
Extrasensory Perception (ESP): the detection of information by some means other than through the normal processes of sensation. (Hockenbury, 108) Perception which is thought to occur without stimulation of the normal sensory channels such as vision and hearing. (Cardwell, 100) Editor’s note - considered ‘pseudo science.’
Clairvoyance: the perception of a remote object or event, such as sensing that a friend has been injured in a car accident. (Hockenbury, 108) Perception of an object removed from our normal sensory awareness. (Cardwell, 100)
Precognition: the ability to predict future events. (Hockenbury, 108) Perception of events yet to come. (Cardwell, 100)
Psychokinesis: the purported ability to mentally alter or influence objects or events. (Coon, 213) The ability to influence a physical object, process, or event, such as bending a key or stopping a clock, without touching it. (Hockenbury, 108)
Telepathy: thought transfer. (Cardwell, 100) Direct communication between the minds of two individuals. (Hockenbury, 108)
Kinesthetic Perception: one’s perception of one’s own body’s felt position, movement, and capabilities. (Blakeslee, 212) A felt sense, based on physical properties of your body, created from the interaction of the physical senses – "touch," "vision," "hearing," "proprioception," and "balance." (Blakeslee, 29) Allows us to be aware of where our bodies, especially limbs, are in space. Helps us to control and coordinate our movements. Helps us recognize objects by touch. Barbara Arrowsmith had problems with this that led to tripping, stumbling, and having difficulty with stairs. She had difficulty holding a cup of juice without spilling it. (Doidge, 28) Also referred to as ‘body schema.’
Motion Perception: the real or apparent movement of objects through the visual field. (MeSH) The ability to gauge the path of moving objects. (Hockenbury, 114)
Percept: an object of perception…The product or result of perceiving, as distinguished from the action. (Oxford)
Perceptual Constancy: the tendency to perceive objects, especially familiar objects, as constant and unchanging despite changes in sensory input. (Hockenbury 115) The tendency for objects to give the same perceptual experience despite the fact that the viewing conditions may change. Commonly quoted examples are "size constancy," "shape constancy," and color constancy. (Cardwell, 180)
Perceptual Set: the expectancies and predispositions that the observer brings to a perceptual situation. We’re often mentally primed to interpret a particular perception in a particular way. Our perceptual sets are influenced by our prior learning experiences. Perceptual sets can exert a strong influence on the perceptual conclusions we reach. Sometimes a perceptual set can lead us astray, for example, UFOs, Loch Ness monster, mermaids, and ghosts. (Hockenbury, 119)
Sound Perception: the sense of hearing. Capable of responding to a wide range of sounds, from 1) faint to blaring, 2) simple to complex, and 3) harmonious to discordant. (Brooker, 96) Also referred to as ‘hearing perception.’
Musical Perception: “PET” and “fMRI” scanning have shown that musical perception is associated with the activation of an extensive network involving many areas of the brain— auditory areas, “motor cortex,” visual areas, “basal ganglia,” “cerebellum,” “hippocampus,” and “amygdala.” Music calls upon many more areas of the brain than any other activity— one reason why “music therapy” is useful for such a wide variety of conditions. The musical networks of the brain work together, and pieces cannot be significantly altered in melodic contour or tempo or rhythm without losing their musical identity. We apprehend a piece of music as a whole. Once a piece of music is known, it is retained not as a (collection) of individual elements but as a completed performance; music is performed by the brain whenever it is recollected. This is also so when it erupts spontaneously as a “musical hallucination.” (Sacks6, 121-123)
Taste Perception: the appreciation of the flavor of substances in the mouth. (OxfordMed) The process by which the nature and meaning of "gustatory" stimuli are recognized and interpreted by the brain. The four basic classes of taste perception are salty, sweet, bitter, and sour. (MeSH)
Theory of Affordances: says that animals and people view their environment not in terms of objectively defined shapes and volumes, but in therms of how they think they can interact with what they see. You see affordances. Affordances make possible and facilitate certain actions. Handles afford grasping, stairs afford climbing, knobs afford turning, doors afford passage. (Blakeslee, 106) Affordance theory states that the world is perceived not only in terms of object shapes and spatial relationships but also in terms of object possibilities for action. Perception drives action. (LearningTheories) Editor’s note - created by James Jerome Gibson, psychologist, Cornell University.
Visual Imagery: using parts of your brain involved in visual perception to conjure up a pictorial memory of what you have seen with your eyes. (Blakeslee, 59)