Читать книгу An Introduction to Intercultural Communication - Fred E. Jandt - Страница 110

The first step in the perception process is Selection. Within your physiological limitations, you are exposed to more stimuli than you could possibly manage. To use sight as an example, you may feel that you are aware of all stimuli on your retinas, but most of the data from the retinas are handled on a subconscious level by a variety of specialized systems. Parts of our brains produce output from the retinas that we cannot “see.” No amount of introspection can make us aware of those processes.

In an interesting study by Simons and Chabris (1999), participants viewed video of a basketball game. They were told to count the number of passes one team made. In the video, a woman dressed as a gorilla walks into the game, turns to face the camera, and beats her fists on her chest. Fifty percent of all people who watch the video don’t see the gorilla. Mack and Rock (1998) argue that we don’t consciously see any object unless we are paying direct, focused attention to that object. When we need something, have an interest in it, or want it, we are more likely to sense it out of competing stimuli. When we’re hungry, we’re more likely to attend to food advertisements.

Being in a busy airport terminal is another example. While there, you are confronted with many competing stimuli. You simply cannot attend to everything. However, if in the airport terminal an announcement is made asking you by name to report to the ticketing counter, you will probably hear your name even in that environment of competing stimuli. Just as you’ve learned to attend to the sound of your name, you’ve learned from your culture to select out other stimuli from the environment. A newborn child is a potential speaker of any language. Having heard only those sounds of one’s own language and having learned to listen to and make only those differentiations necessary, anyone would find it difficult to hear crucial differences in speech sounds in another language.