Why We Perceive As We Do

Sco•to•ma (skou TOU mah): a dark or blind spot in the field of vision. The origin is from the Greek word skotos meaning darkness. In the study of human behavior, scotomas also refer to blind spots in our perception of concepts and ideas or an inability to process certain stimuli. A few related points to ponder…

            We all have scotomas but they vary from person to person. Thus, rarely will all individuals in a group perceive a situation in precisely the same manner. As we work on our project teams, understand that the person next to you is more apt to have a slightly, possibly even dramatically, different perspective on a problem or situation. This is great news. Engage that person. Embrace those differences. It most cases, these differences will lead to a better team product. You rarely do anything in business (well) by yourself. Or, you certainly will not be able to consistently repeat great performances alone. 

           To illustrate one such scotoma, take this simple test. You may have seen this before on other forums or publications. Don’t cheat by reading ahead or you will defeat the purpose of the test. Follow the directions below EXACTLY in sequence. 

1. Quickly read the sentence contained below ONE TIME – start to finish. 

                FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-

                SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-

                IC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE

                EXPERIENCE OF MANY YEARS.   

2. Read the sentence once again and count the occurrences of the letter F. 

3. Record the number. 

How many did you find…3?...4?...5? There are actually 6. Reread the passage again if you don’t believe it. Still not convinced? 

Those of you who found only three Fs probably omitted from your count those contained in the three instances of the word ‘OF’. The reason for this is that we are conditioned to treat the letter F with a softer sound such as that found in the word FINISHED. With that bias, during our scan of the sentence we subconsciously eliminate the harder ‘V’ phonetic sound found in the word ‘OF’. By our inclusion of only the softer sounding occurrences, we solve the wrong problem. This penchant (or bias) discloses our scotomas and in turn leads to inaccuracies in problem solving. The task at hand was to count ALL occurrences of the letter F – not just the softer sounding instances.

If you found six, good for you. It merely indicates that this particular situation did not play to one of your scotomas. But what about the next time? Ask your neighbor how many he or she found. If the count was different, think how the two of you could have solved this problem by collaborating. Would you have been more productive, efficient or accurate? Think about it.