Chapter 4 Cognition Sensation Perception and States of Consciousness PDF

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Notes from Professor Mariana Bernal's class on Cultural Psychology. ASUCQ. Chapter 4...

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Chapter 4: Cognition, Sensation, Perception, and States of Consciousness CP

Lecture

We do not see things with our eyes; we see them through our eyes and with our minds. Are there any significant sensory differences among people of various cultures? What particular characteristics of vision, hearing, smell, touch, or taste have the strongest cultural roots? How do cultures affect our consciousness (state of alertness, self-awareness)? Do people see similar dreams

1: How Culture Influences What We Perceive Perceptual Sets Our experience with the environment shapes our perception by creating perceptual expectations. These expectations make particular interpretations likely to occur and increase both the speed and efficiency of the perceptual process. Personal experience influences one's sensation and perception Environmental conditions affect sensation and perception

Hunter and gatherer cultures have a lower rate of color blindness among their members than agricultural cultures. People who live in deserts do not suffer hearing loss to the extent that city dwellers do The absence of experience can become a significant factor that affects perception Blakemore & Cooper https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/blakemore-and-cooper-1970 Children learn to pay attention to certain stimuli, ignore others and develop particular cognitive preferences Many of them could not recognize objects they previously knew by touch

2: How People Perceive Pictures Perception of pictures is linked to a person’s educational and socialization experience Japanese students and children who speak hebrew draw a circle clockwise & US students and people who speak english draw a cricle counterclockwise Visual scanning is related to writing and drawing Perception of Depth Many people without formal schooling or previous exposure to three-dimensional pictures do not find this picture confusing.

3: Some cultural patterns of drawing Individuals with no formal schooling, young children, and early artists a few thousand years ago did not acquire the ability to convert three-dimensional perception into two- dimensional paintings or sketches

Objects are depicted as they are in reality rather than how they actually appear to the observer.

Profile + Frontal Cubism aimed to give the viewer the time experience of moving around static forms in order to examine their volume and structure. The viewer is specifically encouraged to examine the surfaces of depicted objects from every possible angle.

4: Perception of Color

Colors Druze culture: religious community living primarily in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel. 5 cosmic principles.

5. Other Senses Taste People in regions closer to the equator generally prefer spicier food Touch Some specific cultural norms and expectations influence people’s experience of pain Differences in the ability to endure pain are often a function of the circumstances in which the perception of pain is occurring

6. Perception of Time US & Europe Punctuality. Precise measures of time Time is treated as a product or commodity Middle East & Africa Less structured time orientation

Arab culture: more interested and focused on events or circumstances that are present or occur “now” and tend to pay less attention to those expected or scheduled to happen sometime in the future African culture: time can be experienced through one’s own individual life and through the life of their tribes As people’s wealth increases, so do the number of opportunities available to them. As this demand increases, the “supply” of time goes not grow. Time becomes more valuable, people become increasingly frustrated about the lack of it.

7. Perception of the Beauty Aesthetic experience → perception of beauty: feeling of pleasure evoked by stimuli that are perceived as nice, attractive or rewarding Underpinned by the amount of cortical arousal preocupes by some stimuli in the brain Perception of “beauty” might change over time What is considered tasteful and beautiful is not contain geographic regions or among particular ethnic groups Esther Honig: “make me beautiful”

8. Perception of Music Some Japanese and Indian musical intervals are perceived as extreme dissonance in the West In non-western countries, classical music is usually improvised

9. Consciousness and Culture Consciousness Subjective awareness of one’s own sensations, perceptions and other mental events Consciousness devotes extra cognitive resource es to information that may be particularly meaningful for individual adaptation

Western consciousness tends to be linear, pragmatic, and rational Latín America → magic realism Normal flow of consciousness can be altered by meditation, psychoactive substances, trance, or hypnotic suggestion

10. Sleep and Cultural Significance of Dreams Sleep and Dreams Dreams McManus makes a distinction between 2 types of cultures in terms of their interpretation of dreams: Monophasic → they value cognitive experiences that take place only during normal waking phases and do not incorporate dreams into the process of social perception and cognition. (materialistic) Polyphasic → they value dreams and treat them as part of reality (spiritual) Iroquois (North America) Dreams are flights of the soul, which leaves the body and travels in space and time.[…] They demand action because they indicate something that the person has failed to perform while awake. Dreams also yield information about future events. Araucanos (Chile): Dreams help to communicate with other people and are related to future events. Natives in Australia People can travel in their dreams for particular purposes. African Tribes Both the living and deceased relatives can communicate with the dreamer. Dreams can be transmitted from one person to another, and some people can do so with malicious purposes Zambian Shamans Diagnose a patient’s illness through information contained on their dreams.

Dream Interpretation in Psychoanalysis

Dream interpretation in psychoanalysis pay most attention tot he latent, hidden content of dreams The therapist would try to interpret the meaning of the dream, something that is not obvious to the dream-teller Vienna 1880s: Freud obsessed with finding something that would change human kind A woman who could not move → did not have paralysis or physical symptoms of the illness French Neurologist from a hospital in Paris who was making these symptoms disappear → Hypnosis While people were hypnotized the symptoms were gone → but when they were in full consciousness the symptoms appeared again → there must be something beyond consciousness Anna O 1886 Freud opens his private practice in Vienna Hypnosis was not ideal → not all patients were suggestible to be hypnotized, effects only lasted during hypnotic trance Anna O remembered an event in her life and her symptoms disappeared → once we bring the memory to awareness the problem will be gone Free Association (saying anything that comes to your mind) Dreams are one of the best ways to reach unconscious content → repressed desires were symbolized What do dreams mean for a particular person in a particular moment Symbols are unique

Despite significant differences in the manifest content of dreams, the latent content is believed to be cross-culturally comparable. Punamaki & Joustie (1998) compared dreams of more than 200 Finnish and Palestine children

What one tells about a dream is based on a particular cultural concept of the dream and culturally sanctioned ways of sharing dream content. Our culture may change our experience of dreams, and therefore our dreams are loaded with cultural elements that include not only dream content but also the ways in which dreams are communicated...