What do you think?

“Perception is the process by which we make sense of the world around us.” I find it very intriguing, how people are so similar, yet our minds are extremely diverse. In week two, we learnt that perceptions are shaped by our beliefs, cultural backgrounds or even past experiences. I was working in Julia Gabriel Centre for learning before coming to SIM. I worked mostly with children aged 6months-36months. Working with these adorable babies was a learning experience for me. Other than learning baby tips from the mothers, my ideas about certain issues changed as I started to spend more time with them. I realised that the way a child “makes sense of the world” around them is completely different from the way adults make sense of it. I got to experience this first hand.
A small example. The theme for last term was “under the sea”. During the snack time segment of one of the classes, I offered a child (20months old) some biscuits that were in the shape of fish, and a glass of water. He immediately put the fish in the cup of water. Surprised at what he was doing, I asked him,
“Sam (not his real name), what are you doing?”
“Teacher Niki the fish needs to be in the water otherwise it will die!” Isn’t it interesting how children make associations and remember things? An adult, or myself for that matter, would never have thought of something like that. His knowledge, at that age, about fish must have probably been fish live in the ocean, and live in water. Clearly, this shows how perception is shaped by knowledge.


This is a picture of triplets I worked with. The one in the middle has a phobia of furry objects. In the class, a new puppet is introduced every week. The first week, a mouse was introduced. Unlike his other siblings, he burst into tears when the lead teacher took out the mouse from behind. He was very wary about where the teacher went with the puppet and was very careful about maintaining a distance from it. The following week, an owl was introduced. The fact that the owl was furry and looked almost identical to a real one didn’t help at all. Once again, he cried and had to be consoled when the puppet was brought around the class. The funny thing is that over time he started to associate the teacher with the puppet and would cry the minute she was within his vicinity. I used to find it quite funny that he had such an unusual fear. But later, I learned that he had had an encounter with a dog that unexpectedly turned around and barked at him, which caught him by surprise. Then I realised how it is also possible for perception to be shaped by past experiences. His fear for anything with fur was largely attributed to the fact that the dog had barked at him. Considering how small he is, the size of the dog as well as the loud bark might have been too overwhelming for him. In the case of adults, an encounter like that would probably keep us away from dogs alone- An animal that barks. However his perception of a dog, from what I understand now is anything with fur that moves. Hence, he stays away from everything that has fur.
Basically, these examples show that perceptions vary from person to person. In cases like these, looking through the eyes of others helps us better understand or learn how they feel about certain issues. Very often people limit their views to only how they visualise things, resulting in misunderstandings or miscommunications.

Just for my own satisfaction, I would like to end this entry with a simple test of perception. I came across a dialogue between two people in a recent Bollywood movie, where the couple squabble over something and the actress says something like this.
“So? I’m a girl. And I have every right to change my mind”.
I was pretty excited when I heard that line. Obviously because I’m a girl, and the first thought that came to my mind was “Ah! I can’t wait to use that line on someone”. =)

So, what do you think, is this line justifiable?