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Selection is a term used by communication theorists to describe the determination of causes and effects in a series of interactions. When you perceive your brother as lazy because he never shows up on time, this is known as attribution.
You are at a party and numerous people are talking. The thing attracting our attention can be abstract, like a concept, or concrete, like an object. Or a bright flashlight shining in your face while camping at night is sure to be salient.
The degree of salience depends on three features. We tend to find salient things that are visually or aurally stimulating and things that meet our needs or interests. Lastly, expectations affect what we find salient. Organizing is the second part of the perception process, in which we sort and categorize information that we perceive based on innate and learned cognitive patterns schemata.
Four schemata help us makes sense of experiences: prototypes, personal constructs, stereotypes and scripts. Constructivism is the idea that we organize and interpret experience by applying cognitive structures called cognitive schemata. There are four types of these schemata, prototypes, personal construct, stereotypes, and scripts which we use to make sense of phenomena. One or all of these tools can be used to organize our perceptions in a meaningful way. The first of the schemata is known as a prototype.
A prototype defines the clearest or most representative examples of some category. It is an ideal or best example, of a particular category. Stating that a particular person would make the ideal friend, or that someone is the perfect worker, are both means of prototyping. We classify people by the category that most represents them. Then we consider how well they measure up. The second schemata, personal construct, allows us to measure people and situations. We do so usually after we generalize people into their category or stereotype.
Then we make judgment in a bipolar manner and our perception may not include non-highlighted qualities. Thus, we are reminded that the process of selecting and organizing interact to affect our perception. The third schemata known as stereotyping is the process of predicting generalizations of people and situations.
It is very widely used and can be negative as well as positive. However, it is rarely a completely accurate form of measure. Finally, the last schemata which is used as a guide to action is known as a script. A script is a sequence of activities that spells out how we and others are expected to act in a specific situation.
We follow these scripts when someone says hello, when we date, at church, and in many other situations. We have been trained by our environment to follow certain paths that can be constructive, destructive or both. The organization of what we select to interpret has a very large influence on our perception. Our different environments that we have lived in through our lives will always influence our insight. All four cognitive schemata are ever changing based on new environments and how open we are to new ideas.
The ability to understand that we cannot possibly have a complete understanding of people in this world is crucial to the interpretation process. Only if we realize that we change with every input of information, with every bite of food, with every breath of air can we understand that cognitive schemata are ever-changing.
Therefore, we must revisit regularly how we organize our perceptions constantly and replace what we have thought to be true with what we have learned to be truth. Although selecting and organizing incoming stimuli happens very quickly, and sometimes without much conscious thought, interpretation can be a much more deliberate and conscious step in the perception process. We tend to pay attention to information that we perceive to meet our needs or interests in some way.
This type of selective attention can help us meet instrumental needs and get things done. When you need to speak with a financial aid officer about your scholarships and loans, you sit in the waiting room and listen for your name to be called. Paying close attention to whose name is called means you can be ready to start your meeting and hopefully get your business handled.
Imagine you are in the grocery store and you hear someone say your name. I said your name three times. I thought you forgot who I was! Again, as communicators, especially in persuasive contexts, we can use this to our advantage by making it clear how our message or proposition meets the needs of our audience members. Whether a sign helps us find the nearest gas station, the sound of a ringtone helps us find our missing cell phone, or a speaker tells us how avoiding processed foods will improve our health, we select and attend to information that meets our needs.
We also find salient information that interests us. In many cases we know what interests us and we automatically gravitate toward stimuli that match up with that. Because of this tendency, we often have to end up being forced into or accidentally experiencing something new in order to create or discover new interests.
For example, you may not realize you are interested in Asian history until you are required to take such a course and have an engaging professor who sparks that interest in you. As communicators, you can take advantage of this perceptual tendency by adapting your topic and content to the interests of your audience.
The relationship between salience and expectations is a little more complex. Basically, we can find expected things salient and find things that are unexpected salient.
While this may sound confusing, a couple examples should illustrate this point. Since we expect something to happen, we may be extra tuned in to clues that it is coming. In terms of the unexpected, if you have a shy and soft-spoken friend who you overhear raising the volume and pitch of his voice while talking to another friend, you may pick up on that and assume that something out of the ordinary is going on.
For something unexpected to become salient, it has to reach a certain threshold of difference. If you walked into your regular class and there were one or two more students there than normal, you may not even notice. If you walked into your class and there was someone dressed up as a wizard, you would probably notice. So, if we expect to experience something out of the routine, like a package delivery, we will find stimuli related to that expectation salient. We can also apply this concept to our communication.
I always encourage my students to include supporting material in their speeches that defies our expectations. You can help keep your audience engaged by employing good research skills to find such information.
Look at the following sentence and read it aloud: Percpetoin is bsaed on pateetrns, maening we otfen raech a cocnlsuion witouht cosnidreing ecah indviidaul elmenet. This example illustrates a test of our expectation and an annoyance to every college student. We have all had the experience of getting a paper back with typos and spelling errors circled. This can be frustrating, especially if we actually took the time to proofread.
When we first learned to read and write, we learned letter by letter. Over time, we learned the patterns of letters and sounds and could see combinations of letters and pronounce the word quickly. This can lead us to overlook common typos and spelling errors, even if we proofread something multiple times.
Second, read your papers backward. Organizing is the second part of the perception process, in which we sort and categorize information that we perceive based on innate and learned cognitive patterns. Three ways we sort things into patterns are by using proximity, similarity, and difference.
For example, have you ever been waiting to be helped in a business and the clerk assumes that you and the person standing beside you are together? The slightly awkward moment usually ends when you and the other person in line look at each other, then back at the clerk, and one of you explains that you are not together.
Even though you may have never met that other person in your life, the clerk used a basic perceptual organizing cue to group you together because you were standing in proximity to one another. We also group things together based on similarity. We tend to think similar-looking or similar-acting things belong together.
I have two friends that I occasionally go out with, and we are all three males, around the same age, of the same race, with short hair and glasses. Despite the fact that many of our other features are different, the salient features are organized based on similarity and the three of us are suddenly related.
We also organize information that we take in based on difference. Perceptual errors involving people and assumptions of difference can be especially awkward, if not offensive.
These strategies for organizing information are so common that they are built into how we teach our children basic skills and how we function in our daily lives. If you think of the literal act of organizing something, like your desk at home or work, we follow these same strategies. If you have a bunch of papers and mail on the top of your desk, you will likely sort papers into separate piles for separate classes or put bills in a separate place than personal mail. You may have one drawer for pens, pencils, and other supplies and another drawer for files.
In this case you are grouping items based on similarities and differences. You may also group things based on proximity, for example, by putting financial items like your checkbook, a calculator, and your pay stubs in one area so you can update your budget efficiently. In summary, we simplify information and look for patterns to help us more efficiently communicate and get through life.
Our brain innately categorizes and files information and experiences away for later retrieval, and different parts of the brain are responsible for different sensory experiences.
In short, it is natural for things to group together in some ways. There are differences among people, and looking for patterns helps us in many practical ways. However, the judgments we place on various patterns and categories are not natural; they are learned and culturally and contextually relative. Our perceptual patterns do become unproductive and even unethical when the judgments we associate with certain patterns are based on stereotypical or prejudicial thinking.
We also organize interactions and interpersonal experiences based on our firsthand experiences. When two people experience the same encounter differently, misunderstandings and conflict may result. Punctuation refers to the structuring of information into a timeline to determine the cause stimulus and effect response of our communication interactions. This concept also helps illustrate how organization and interpretation can happen together and how interpretation can influence how we organize information and vice versa.
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