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Psychology research question
Posted by alexd181 • 5/15/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: brain, Psychology
I don't know any psych forums I can post this at - so I'm hoping someone who is reading this forum can help. This has been driving me crazy.
I'm looking for the term used when people block out advertising or hit the mute button on tv when ads come on. I thought it was "ad blindness" but my research came up with nothing at all on this term. This is for research in neurology and I am trying to find which brain activities are involved in the information filtering. Like what makes us read the content on a website but ignore the ads. It seems so obvious but I can't find a term that applies in the context of 'advertisment filtering and censoring by the brain'.
Does anyone have any idea at all?? Anything would help!
Thank you
Alex
User Comments
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Perhaps you can create a new term if you can't find it and then wikipedia it? Why not be the first to term something. Let me know how you get on with this. Good luck!
Eco-mama -
ad blindness would suffice but I have to find actual research that others have done on it ... and obviously ad blindness is not the term this falls under in psych.
I guess if I just find the thing that regulates filtering of information as making content/tv more "important" and advertising as "less important" that would do. But what that thing is.. again I haven't got a clue.
I've got to do this for a written report and topic speech so I don't think the audience would be too pleased if I said "I invented this term and added it to wiki" : P but I may have to improvise somewhat. Thanks for replying. -
ha ha ha, i understand now. i will see if i can find anything. however i am not sure if ad blindness is good, sounds negative. you need something more neutral because those people who choose to ignore ads choose to do so instead of actively being fed by ads.
how about ad-block? -
There are a few differing terms related to what is being filtered specifically (especially depending on which nation you are in ie Britain or America) - I've actually forgotten the terms relating to ads - but an umbrella term frequently used is 'selective cognizance...'
Ben -
I Googeled "Reticular Activating System" which is what you are referring to. Here is a quote from a blog:
"It’s called the “Reticular Activation System” or RAS. It is the part of your brain that automatically filters out what is not important to you and brings your attention to things that are important to you."
You can read more about it here - www.livethepower.com/blog/100/the-universal-law-of-attraction/ at her blog or do your own research using the above search term on Google.
@OzScot: "selective cognizance" is another great term for it. -
I thought he was talking about people that actively or intentionally block advertising. Otherwise you are right it is "Reticular Activating System" but that is what is commonly known as "ad blindness". on the web it is often referred to banner blindness. -
Selective cognizance sounds like a good place to start, I'll have a look and see if I can find how that can relate to neurology. Thank you.
OutsideMyBrain, are you sure "Reticular Activating System" is not something else?
Thanks for your help guys.
BTW does anyone know if there is any leading info about neurological causes of selective cognizence? Or is it something we do because of evolution and social habit?-
Yes, I'm sure. I'm also pretty sure that you can use SC and RAS interchangably. There may be slight differences in the actual definition of each.
The cause of this is due to the fact that our brains see literally thousands upon thousands of images every single day. Our conscious brains can't possibly retain all of this information, so our brains were created by God (personal belief - not to get off subject) with the ability to sort out what is important to us vs. what is not and it does this on a sub-conscious level and it is done within nano-seconds of taking in an image.
If we had to physically digest every single image that entered our brains, we would never get anything done. In fact, here is a interesting point. Our brains tend to work faster than our eyes can send the information to it. How many times have you seen a word, or a person and you thought you actually saw something different for a split second and then when you did a double take, it wasn't what you saw at all.
This is part of our sub-conscious brains at work taking bits of information (from what we just looked at) and grabbing stored information that has a close resemblence to what we saw and creating an image in our minds eye. Most of the time we catch our selves and double-take to correct ourselves. But many times we don't and we percieve that we actually saw something that wasn't there. Amazing!
I got a little off the subject there, sorry, but it relates in the fact that our brains are forced to "block out" information that isn't important to us in order to be able to handle all of the infomation we feel that is. And, by doing this, our brains are putting images together and recalling images constantly and many times faster than our eyes work.
Hope that helps... just my two cents!
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Have you checked H-Net? www.h-net.org/lists/ -
OMB you pretty much articulated what's going on but in different words (and maybe even concepts) than I would have used. But you're right - blocking things out is a learned behaviour, although recent research suggests that it's because the synapses (which are responsible for transmitting information) actually strengthen the more they are used and weaken the less they are used - if you use the same area of the brain time and again for 'taking in' a particular type of info then in effect you're fine tuning it by strengthening the potential signal - think of it as cable I guess - you can pass mroe current through it the thicker it is - and the weaker one carries less current - over time we've strenghtened the synapses we particularly like using and weakened the ones we don't (which is why it appears we are filtering things out - it's just that the cables are 'thinner') - I think lol - I'm having to go back to 10 years here to my social psychology lectures and I think my cables were pretty thin for those
Ben-
@OzScot - Excellent point, and thanks for the additional info. Though, I think Alex got the information that he needed a while back and we are just having a good time here recalling what we can from our thin cables. (That was hilarious.)
On another note... since those cables, if you will, can be strengthened and weakened, I would have to say, that the good news is this, it can work in reverse as well. IOW, if we become less interested in a particular subject, the thick cords will eventually atrophy and become thin cords again, just like any other muscle in our bodies that are not used, or pushed.
The reason I say good news, is this... (which by the way will now be the subject of my next post) We have the ability to "change" our RAS or SC whenever we want. We can actually "train" our brains to start "noticing" things that we want it to notice. And vice versa, we can train our brains to "not notice" or "ignore" the things we don't want.
In my post, I will go into detail about how we can do this. We as humans can train our brains to "notice" opportunities, certain types of people, articles by bloggers, nutritional foods, etc. that will lead to an overall increase in our health and wellness and our financial freedom. Imagine that! Thanks for the inspiration! -
OMB I've seen this 'strengthening' of the cables applied - and I was genuinely horrified at first as I thought the poor patients were being abused and turned into slaves - then I saw the fruits of doing so and had to admit it was impressive. People who have been brain damaged in accidents etc are more or less supervised to do repetitive tasks hundreds of times a day - same thing, over and over again - I've seen it done with autistic children too - and slowly but surely those cables thicken and they 'remember' what is is they are supposed to do in a given situation and no longer need supervision in a given context...
Oops I'm probably digressing - sorry
Ben -
Just a minor digression... but really it's the same concept, just a different part of the brain. They do this with stroke patients as well. Stroke victims have lost a part of their brain and through physical therapy, a persons brain will, just like you said, start with a thin strand and build it up into a thicker strand and eventually a cord (which in the stroke victims case actually creates a path "around" the injured or dead section of the brain.) Our brains are very fascinating, which is of course why I chose my screen name, because once I type, now my thoughts, turned into words, are Outside My Brain Again.
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Thanks for all the responses from everyone.
This has been a great help.
Alex -
...late to the party as usual. Have you read the book by Daniel Goleman, 'Social Intelligence'? It's not a textbook. But it does deal with the topic you are interested in (from a social standpoint ie. why men filter out ugly women...apparently it's not 'male shallowness'...just neurobiology at work...such simple creatures...men, anyway i digress...) and attempts to explain the neurophysiology behind the phenomenon. i can't remember the term, i've loaned the book out... so if you can get hold of it you may be closer to an answer. Or just ask your psych professor?
...and as long as everyone is suitably impressed with the sass and intelligence of homemakers...my job is done here.
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i've got it, maybe, are we talking about 'directed attention'
Mechanism -when multiple stimuli are recevied in the visual field, these stimuli interact with each other in a mutually suppressive way, so that attention is focused on what the brain deems important, blocking out what's not important. -
BBC article on how technical people filter information. They call it an irrelevance filter.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7132829.stm
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