On knowing ... or not

One of the fun things about being retired is that I have time (or take time) to notice. Recently, I noticed that I was noticing things going on around me that reminded me of things I used to teach. Since I taught psychology, this means I get to notice people in new ways. Now, I know this sounds odd: “You were teaching these things but didn’t notice them?” It’s a different experience, just sitting and noticing, for no reason other than that these things are so fascinating, so hugely entertaining in their real-life forms.

A case in point:

Recently, I was waiting for my breakfast at a favorite local eatery, watching a couple of young children who were watching the world. One was an infant. His hair was standing on end from the static electricity, and his gaze was fixed on the ceiling. He was transfixed by the fans, and (to all appearances) oblivious to everything else. The other child was a girl aged about 5 whose attention was focused, more gently, on pictures of castles and city scenes in the former Czechoslovakia. She was less single-minded, seemed more in touch with what was going on around her, and she was definitely curious about those pictures.

I was watching them and thinking what a marvelous process they were going through. Their momentary attention, barely noticeable unless you’re watching closely, is the stuff of mental development. For the infant, these moments of watching the world—just seeing, taking in the sensations, the movement, the relationship between events—this is how he creates the world in his mind. The little girl already has some of these most basic knowledge bits. The pictures of things she hasn’t seen feed her evolving understanding that a world exists beyond her immediate experience. She’s old enough to “get” that this is true; her task now is populating that absent world with bits of content.

Maria Montessori said that “play is the work of the child.” And here, before my very eyes, in a neighborhood diner on a Saturday morning, are two children hard at work. These early bits of “knowledge” may seem trivial and primitive next to what these children will later do with their minds. But they are the building blocks of their future understanding of the world: how to pilot a bike through an obstacle course, coordinate services on a disaster response team, or calculate the trajectory of a galaxy retreating into distant space/time. It’s incredible to watch.

And then, of course, there are the less inspiring examples of psychological principles at work:

I recently caught myself in a moment of firmly believing that something would happen simply because I wanted it to happen so badly. Psychologists call this “magical thinking”: imagine it hard enough, and poof, it's real! Little kids do this a lot (crossing fingers, magical chants, etc.) and adults, apparently, have a share, too.

On another occasion, I experienced a momentary return to infancy. Very young babies don’t really know that there is a world outside of them, one that exists even when they aren’t sensing it. Then, they start getting it that things continue to exist despite them. It’s called “object permanence.” So now, knowing that things still exist even when they can’t see them, they can start looking for missing objects. At one point in this process, if they lose something, they look for it where they last found it—even if they “know” it’s not there. Like, they saw a ball disappear under the couch, but they don’t see it there. So they look under the chair, where they found it yesterday. OK, so I lost my keys. I checked my jacket pocket. Not there. I looked elsewhere, no luck. I went back to my jacket pocket. Not there. Checked elsewhere. No luck. Back to the jacket … Need I say more?

Here’s another one we all do. Psychologists call it “superstitious behavior.” It’s not exactly what we usually mean by superstition (although it does help to explain superstitions). If you do a behavior a few times, and it works, you’re more likely to do the same behavior again. Simple, right? But exactly which part of the behavior worked? Say you had a particularly good job interview, so you want to do the next one just like that. But what worked? Was it the suit you wore? The slides you showed? The greeting you used? Where you sat in the room? The heft of your vita? The day of the week? So, say you decide that the key was that you ate oatmeal that morning so you felt really solid. So, next job interview, you eat oatmeal, and sure enough, it goes well. Next interview, oatmeal. Pretty soon, you’re afraid not to eat oatmeal before a job interview.

My own recent encounter with this had to do with my now famous coyote. The day after I photographed her, I felt an irresistible urge to walk exactly the same route hoping that she would be there. Of course, I “knew” that where I walked had nothing to do with where she was, but that route was lucky the day before, so … Superstitious behavior, for sure.

Or was it object permanence (She was here when I lost her)? Or magical thinking (I wish so much that she’d be there)? Or all of those?

The trifecta of cognitive glitches all in one experience. There must be a name for that, too.