Posted by special_k on April 5, 2006, at 23:06:36
In reply to Re: a thought for today... » gabbi~1, posted by gardenergirl on April 5, 2006, at 14:22:04
> I think it might also relate a bit to bottom up versus top down processing. And I may confuse the two, because it's been a long time since this class...
mmm. i know a bit about 'bottom-up vs top-down'. 'bottom up' is empirically driven, information from the senses. 'top down' is rationally driven, information from memory / reason etc. there may be no hard and fast line... sometimes people talk about bottom up perception as
red square -> perception of red square
and top down perception as
imagining (from memory) -> perception of red square
but the distinction comes up in different contexts and maybe you encountered it in a slightly different one...
> But I'm an intuitive, big picture kind of thinker. I often know what I know, but if you ask me to give you the cognitive steps or the detiails that comprise the big picture, I can't always do it. I tend to wave my hands in the air and say, "you know..." It's always great when someone DOES know and I don't have to use words. Because when I have to use words to explain an intuition, and I struggle, that's when I start to feel stupid and doubt myself. :(yeah. sounds like you might be using Damasio's notion of intuition (where the correct answer is given emotional weight without your necessarily being able to say WHY the answer seems plausible to you).
he thinks that the reason (sometimes when all goes well) that the answer has emotional weight is because you have followed the rational / logical steps at some point and your emotional weighting was thus established on that basis and now gives you a rapid response so you don't have to plough through the logic again...
but maybe not... or maybe so. i don't see why trying to do the logic can't interfeare / confound things... kind of like trying to describe what you are doing when you are driving can interfeare / confound things... yet when you learned you probably did learn via following a description of what to do...
> My husband, on the other hand, is the opposite. He can take FOREVER to get to conclusion, because he thinks through all the steps in between. He is not at all intuitive, and doesn't trust a feeling or intuition until he's reasoned it out.
if that goes too much to an extreme... i've been reading about neurological disorders where people have intact rationality (score very well on verbal, memory, object, numerical tasks) and yet seem to exhibit the frame problem... basically... they can list all the options but because there isn't any emotional weights involved... they never manage to prioritise one and GET MOVING. some people have lost their emotions... they turn out to be very socially disabled re enacting future plans, looking out for their welfare, being able to prioritise tasks etc. not saying your husband is like that lol. just that there does seem to need to be a balance between rationality and emotion for proper / normal / adaptive functioning. either extreme is problematic...
> I would say that it's nice to have both ways between us, but only if we are patient and respect each other's process.
yeah. i guess people lie along a continuum. nice to complement rather than play on each others weaknesses...
> But at any rate, I tend to think that one's cognitive processing style might be to some degree hard-wired.yeah... serotonin in various areas... how well developed certain areas of the frontal lobes are... how intense emotional responses are to start with i guess... bloody complicated really
:-)
poster:special_k
thread:628937
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060331/msgs/629477.html