Michael Jackson and your ability to GROK

Posted by Faizel Mohidin on Aug 30, 2009 in Mind Mapping, Mind Maps in Education | 3 comments

I first discovered the word ‘Grok’ in Joyce Wycoff’s book, Mindmapping about 15 years ago. I covered the word in my article ‘The Mind’s unknown potential’ based on a chapter in her book.

‘Grokking’ falls into the category of gestalt psychology, where humans are able to see things as a whole despite apparent contradictions and ambiguities. One’s understanding of the situation is so good that it becomes a part of us. Its pattern is understood completely as a gestalt.

Gestalt psychology also covers things like eemergence, reification, multistability and invariance.

From Wikipedia:

Emergence

Emergence is demonstrated by the perception of the Dog Picture, which depicts a Dalmatian dog sniffing the ground in the shade of overhanging trees. The dog is not recognized by first identifying its parts (feet, ears, nose, tail, etc.), and then inferring the dog from those component parts. Instead, the dog is perceived as a whole, all at once. However, this is a description of what occurs in vision and not an explanation. Gestalt theory does not explain how the percept of a dog emerges.

Reification

Reification

Reification is the constructive or generative aspect of perception, by which the experienced percept contains more explicit spatial information than the sensory stimulus on which it is based.
For instance, a triangle will be perceived in picture A, although no triangle has actually been drawn. In pictures B and D the eye will recognize disparate shapes as “belonging” to a single shape, in C a complete three-dimensional shape is seen, where in actuality no such thing is drawn.
Reification can be explained by progress in the study of illusory contours, which are treated by the visual system as “real” contours.

Multistability

Multistability (or multistable perception) is the tendency of ambiguous perceptual experiences to pop back and forth unstably between two or more alternative interpretations. This is seen for example in the Necker cube, and in Rubin’s Figure / Vase illusion shown. Other examples include the ‘three-pronged widget’ and artist M. C. Escher’s artwork and the appearance of flashing marquee lights moving first one direction and then suddenly the other. Again, Gestalt does not explain how images appear multistable, only that they do.

Invariance

Invariance

Invariance is the property of perception whereby simple geometrical objects are recognized independent of rotation, translation, and scale; as well as several other variations such as elastic deformations, different lighting, and different component features. For example, the objects in A in the figure are all immediately recognized as the same basic shape, which are immediately distinguishable from the forms in B. They are even recognized despite perspective and elastic deformations as in C, and when depicted using different graphic elements as in D. Computational theories of vision, such as those by David Marr, have had more success in explaining how objects are classified.

Now what has this to do with Mind Mapping and Michael Jackson?

Mind Maps allow you to see the ‘whole picture’. If you memorise a Mind Map of a topic, you create the hooks for your brain to create memory associations. Your brain will automatically fill in the blanks and complete the picture, making it easier to recall detailed information, even if you only memorise the main branches.

When you think of Michael Jackson, what picture do you see in your Mind’s eye?

If you have a look at the following pictures, your brain will immediately know that it’s Michael Jackson, despite the radical changes. Your wonderful brain naturally builds the neural networks to associate the various pictures of him as being the same person.

The pattern is understood completely as a gestalt. i.e. you have Grokked it!