Cna yuo raed tihs snetnece amd are yuo srupiriesd taht yuo can.

Jack Dikian

October 2010

Can yuo rmemeber to pruchsae tmoato suauce, can of baens, btuter, beard, and vegeatbels

There are (and have been) a number of models psychologists have adopted to describe or explain how we might recognize words (word recognition). Historically psychologists have moved from a theory where we use the overall shape of a word to one of using letters for word recognition.

Word shape or ‘Bouma shape”

The idea here is that we perceive words as complete patterns rather than a sequence of letter parts. Some claim that the information used to recognize a word is the pattern of ascending, descending, and neutral characters. This method was first described in the 1880’s by James Cattell, suggesting that we recognize word patterns as an overall image because we have seen these patterns on many occasions.

This model is supported by what is in cognitive psychology, the word superiority effect (the phenomenon that people are more accurate in recognizing a letter in the context of a word than they are when a letter is presented in isolation).

Some experimental support for the word shape model has been reported by Woodworth (1938) in his book Experimental Psychology.

Serial Letter Recognition

The method for word recognition is that words are read letter-by-letter sequentially from left to right. In essence, recognizing a word is equivalent to looking up a word in a dictionary. You start off by finding the first letter, than the second, and so on until you recognize the word. This model, however, can’t explain the word superiority effects.

Parallel Letter Recognition

Here, letters within a word are recognized simultaneously, and the letter information is used to recognize the words. This is a model that is currently accepted by most psychologists, with much of the evidence coming from eye movement work.

There are a number of [recognition] heuristics that are used to explain parallel letter recognition. An activation based parallel letter recognition model (an activation flow) requires stimulus letters to be processed simultaneously by first recognizing the features of the individual letters, such as horizontal lines, diagonal lines, curves, etc.

Activation flow from feature units towards word units and from word units to letter units may be used in a bottom-up and top-down process. In the bottom-up flow, stimulus letter features are sent to the “letter detector level”, where each of the letters in the stimulus word are recognized simultaneously. In this cascade system, the stimulus word is processed by first, the feature detectors, letter detectors, and finally word detectors.

Cattell, J. (1886). The time taken up by cerebral operations. Mind, 11, 277-282, 524-538.
Woodworth, R.S. (1938). Experimental psychology. New York; Holt.

Deja Vu - Uncanny feeling of being here before

Jack Dikian

2004

Introduction

Recently I happened to type the word “deja vu” into Google’s trends tool and was surprised to see that in 2008 there was a number of spikes – that is the search volume index jumped greatly, and more so, that since 2008, the search volume index for this word grew. The other interesting thing about this trend seems, at least on first glance, to be mainly emanating from Brazil, Greece, and Portugal (see Fig. 1)

I, like many others, have experienced more than once the uncanny feeling or illusion of having already seen or experienced something that is being experienced for the first time. And, again similar to those who report to have experienced this, it leaves people puzzled, disoriented and searching for explanations.

Background

The term deja vu is French and means, literally, "already seen." Those who have experienced the feeling describe it as an overwhelming sense of familiarity with something that shouldn't be familiar at all. Say, for example, you are traveling to England for the first time. You are touring a cathedral, and suddenly it seems as if you have been in that very spot before. Or maybe you are having dinner with a group of friends, discussing some current topic, and you get the feeling that you've already experienced this very thing - same friends, same dinner, same topic.

The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness," "strangeness," "weirdness," or what Sigmund Freud calls "the uncanny." The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past.

As much as 70 percent of the population reports having experienced some form of deja vu. A higher number of incidents occur in people 15 to 25 years old than in any other age group. Deja vu has been firmly associated with temporal-lobe epilepsy. Reportedly, deja vu can occur just prior to a temporal-lobe seizure. People suffering a seizure of this kind can experience deja vu during the actual seizure activity or in the moments between convulsions. However, deja vu occurs in individuals with and without a medical condition, there is much speculation as to how and why this phenomenon happens.

Some current thinking

Some practitioners attribute de ja vu to simple fantasy or wish fulfillment, while some psychiatrists ascribe it to a mismatch in the brain causing the brain to mistake the present for the past. Others from the world of the para-sciences believe, amongst other things that it is related to a past-life experience. The frequency of the experience has left specialists searching for explanations. There is an evident absence of rationale, as expressed through varying opinions from psychologists, neurobiologists and even spiritual healers.

Links with a number of disorders and / or other factors

Early researchers tried to establish a link between déjà vu and serious psychopathology such as schizophrenia, anxiety, and dissociative identity disorder, hoping for some diagnostic value. However, there does not seem to be any special association between déjà vu and schizophrenia or other psychiatric conditions such as depersonalization(1). The strongest pathological association of déjà vu is with temporal lobe epilepsy leading some researchers to speculate that the experience of déjà vu is possibly a neurological anomaly.

As most people suffer a mild (non-pathological) epileptic episode regularly such as a hypnagogic jerk - it is conjectured that a similar minor neurological aberration occurs in the experience of déjà vu, resulting in an erroneous sensation of memory.

There have been reports that certain pharmaceutical drugs increase the chances of déjà vu occurring in the user.

A neurobiological explanation involves brain grid and place cells as described by the work of Neuroscientist Edvard I. Moser of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. When the brain is keeping track of an environment, Place cells (neurons) are involved in the processing of this by [mapping] place cells to specific locations in an environment and fire when you pass through that location.

Grid cells on the other hand work in a network to produce a kind of internal coordinate system, noting information about distance and direction. These neurons do not correspond to a specific location but become active across several regularly spaced points in any setting.

Grid cells are located in the entorhinal cortex, a brain region that processes information before sending it to the hippocampus, the area where place cells are located. Because place cells have a unique firing pattern for nearly every experience, it is likely that the hippocampus, and not primarily the entorhinal cortex, decides whether a location is novel or being revisited. When a strange place is experienced as familiar, it may be because the activated ensemble of place cells at that location happens to be similar to a pattern of activity that was elicited by a previous locale.

Next

What is going on in Brazil, Greece, and Portugal and why have they become so interested in this phenomena?

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(1) Z Klin Psychol Psychopathol Psychother. 1991;39(4):357-68.
Depersonalization and déjà vu experiences: prevalences in nonclinical samples

(2) Neuroscientist Edvard I. Moser of the Norwegian University of Science

Johari Window

Jack Dikian

July 2003

ABSTRACT

This article describes the use of Johari windows in Conflict Resolution, Negotiation and Team Building

Introduction

The Johari Window model also known as the “Johari Window” demonstrates the process of giving and receiving feedback, improving self-awareness, personal development, group development and understanding relationships between individuals within a group.

Psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham developed the window in 1955, while researching group dynamics at the University of California Los Angeles. The model was first published in the Proceedings of the Western Training Laboratory in Group Development by UCLA Extension Office in 1955, and was later expanded by Joseph Luft.

The Johari Window model is especially relevant today as a communication model that can be used to improve understanding between individuals within a team or in a group setting where emphasis is increasingly placed on, and influence of soft' skills, behaviour, empathy, cooperation, and inter-group development.

The three key ideas behind the tool:

• That individuals can build trust between themselves by disclosing information about themselves – self-disclosure and exposure,

• That they can learn about themselves and come to terms with personal issues with the help of feedback from others – this is feedback solicitation,

• The team collectively are unaware of feelings, latent abilities, aptitudes and experiences and through collective or mutual discovery, can help people to fulfil more of their potential, achieve more, and contribute to organisational performance.