This is a little question about perception that has bugged me for a while.
Whenever I got my Olds, The dash on the car seemed, visually, quite daunting. Complex, lots of buttons, and very busy, lots going on there. As I became familair with the car, The complexity that I percieved in the dash lessened, where now, I see it as being very simple and straightforward. Quite unlike when I got it. I realize that familiarity will make it seem so, but why is this? In my case, there was what seemed to be a subtle visual difference between how I saw the unfamiliar dash, and the seemingly less complex one that I percieve now.
This also applies to other things as well, Once I gained familairity with my new computer, the interface seemed visually simpler, whereas an interface that is equally complex, just rearranged with other differences, seems more visually daunting and complex.
Anyone else ever notice this, and any ideas what causes it?
The phenomenon you are talking about is real. I’ve heard it referred to as “chunking”. Initially, you see many separate parts, components, pieces, whatever. But as you learn how they interact and relate to one-and-other, you start “chunking” them together. All those disperate knobs and dials get chunked together into something called a dashboard.
Your mind no longer sees it as a bunch of seperate items, but as one single “chunked” concept.
When I first saw my ex, I told the other guy with me that she had a big jaw and nose and ears.
When we were an item and I was in love, she seemed so beautiful I strutted her around at bars and parties like she was a model.
About a year after we split she started looking like a girl with a big jaw and nose and ears. again.
Everytime I drive around to familiar places, I try to think back to what they looked like the first few times I was there, and my memory has a completely different image. I always find that rather impressive.
I do that myself. It always seems like a bit of a shame to me, that once I get familiar with something, that I lose that initial perception of what it looked like. Places too.
And I have also noticed it with people. How their very appearance changes as you get to know them.
Visual input comes in. You get sensation (visual senses) and you have feelings about the similarity between that image and various other images you’ve encountered in your lifetime. Almost instantly you figure out that this visual data implies something is in front of you, and that the different focal distances have implications for differences in distance, as do things like shadows, etc, and from cues like those you turn a map of hues and saturations and brightnesses and whatnot into a sense of different distinguishable objects and their component parts.
(A newborn baby in your lap staring at the same dashboard is only just starting to make observations that will lead to the ability to do even that much. His eight-month old cousin in your sister’s lap is reaching her hand out for what she knows by now to be objects in front of her line of vision).
Your mind, meanwhile, is viewing the round chromium gauge barrel and the red indicator dial and increment lines and making correlations between that and rememberances of half-glimpsed aircraft dashboards and hi-tech equipment readouts, as well as fine shiny metals glimpsed elsewhere, and in all such correlated cases remembering emotional responses to those prior inputs – glamour, excitement, power, something happening, technical important measurements, finery…
Eight months later, you slip behind the seat and the unconscious assessment process takes place more quickly and mostly associates the glimpse of dashboard with previous glimpses of the same dashboard. If your times behind the wheel of the car have been glamourous and exciting and pertaining to important events and a sense of power, then you’ll still get a rush; but if they’ve more often involved another boring Monday morning commute, a traffic jam or two, mundane auto performance, etc, then ::yawn:: my blah everyday car ride coming up ::slides into seat::