In today's lesson we essentially examined the relationship between language and perception. Firstly we watched a video regarding the The Stroop Test. I particularly found this to be quite interesting as I was recently used as a subject for the Stroop Test by some psychology students and thus could relate to this phenomenon. However, when I had first been exposed to this test I did not have much hindsight wisdom about the test. Nonetheless, having studied this test in varied subjects this year, I am now familiar with the rudimentary purpose of it. In fact, I could make many connections with this test and the most significant one would be the factor we associated the Stroop Test with in our English Lang and Lit lessons: multilingualism. In the lesson, we learnt how a bilingual/multilingual person often outperforms a monolingual in the Stroop Test due the faster processing and elasticity of their brains. Actually, I clearly remember how I had completed the Stroop Test with the psychology students and they had been quite impressed with the speed that I had exhibited. Perhaps I can attribute this trait to the fact that I can speak almost 6 languages? Maybe it was just a coincidence, but evidence accumulated over time supports the claim that multilinguals are considerably efficient in the Stroop Test in comparison to monolinguals.
We then watched the 'Million Dollar Question' video and in all honesty I felt quite exasperated and annoyed at all how it played out. When I learnt that this was a comedic staged scene and not the official TV show, I was quite relieved in a sense as if this were to be real television, I would have been quite disappointed. However, this video really got me thinking about how we truly depend on sense and perception to such a great extent but these elements that we rely on so heavily can often be deceiving. Language is one such element interlinked to our perception of things. For instance, a word may mean something in one context but another in another and therefore our perception of that word is limited to our subjective point of view. This can be a starting point for several arguments caused due to the dynamics in varied opinions based on the sense and perception of different individuals.
Another example of the limitation of sense and perception can be dependent on the phenomenon of property of object vs property of mind. Whilst we tried to distinguish between several examples and classify whether they were property of the object or mind, I could not agree that even one of them was the property of an object and personally believe that every thing we perceive around us is based on subjective sense and perception. For instance, a sweet drink may not be sweet for everyone and the definition of what comprises of light blue and what dark blue is also dependent and varied from individual to individual.
Another way to look at sense and perception hindering our perception would be when we over-depend on our senses. For instance, often times we may here or see things that may not be true and at times like this, we have to learn to deviate from our primary sense and perception and apply logicality to decipher the true meaning of something. A basic example I can think of is when a person overhears their friend "gossiping" about them. However, they may have misheard the conversation and this can result in conflict. Thus, whilst primary sense and perception are key to our survival, we must also learn how to distinguish between contexts that need us to think independently of our subjective viewpoints and thus overpower the reliability of one our sense and perception.
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