Do you see what I see?

Recently, I started doing puzzles in the weekend newspapers. It wasn’t something that I planned, however, it has become a staple in my morning weekend ritual. Research suggests that doing puzzles provides brain gains, stimulates neuroplasticity, improves memory and enhances problem-solving capability. Puzzles also contain patterns that enable us to visually recognise and link together concepts and objects.

Most of us are good at remembering faces, as most faces have a predictable pattern consisting of two eyes, a nose and a mouth in locations that we expect. Although we are fairly accurate when recognising faces when positioned upright (U), inverted (I) faces are more challenging to recognise. The face (UI) effect suggests that inversion changes the relationship among individual facial features and therefore disrupts the pattern recognition script for some people.

Why do some people see patterns that others do not?

Our ability to notice patterns is highly subjective, and what one person perceives as a pattern can be different to someone else.?Imagine that you are wearing a pair of googles. Your googles are blue therefore the only things that you see are blue and nothing else exists. Yet people who wear red goggles or orange goggles or green goggles or purple goggles are seeing something very different, even though they are all looking at the very same thing.

People commonly believe that everyone sees and experiences the world the same way. The reality is that we don’t. Throughout our lives, we collect millions of pieces of data every day that supports us to interpret the world and notice the patterns that exist when we are wearing our goggles. We then filter the information based on our individual beliefs and values and keep collecting proof to support that worldview which then becomes our reality.

And when it becomes our reality, we often don’t question it.

The fact that we don’t question it, is alarming when you realise that our brains take ‘short cuts’ and generate results that are not always completely accurate. Different short cuts can result in different kinds of bias or distortions in our thinking. ?

In today’s society, our ability to access information can sometimes supersede our ability (and willingness) to understand it. And when we can’t understand all of the information that we consume, we start to look for patterns to create order and structure, taking seemingly unrelated events and connecting them until they become inextricably linked in our minds. The mere fact that two variables are in play at the same time, is sometimes all the evidence that a person needs to interpret information in a way that supports their own beliefs and bias.

With this in mind, even though our brain supports us every day to make sense of patterns, we should also be aware that it can also be our best pattern inventor. Klaus Conrad recognised this within his patients, coining the term 'apophenia' - the tendency to perceive patterns between objects or ideas when they simply don’t exist. One type of apophenia is gamblers fallacy, where people perceive patterns or meaning in random numbers in pursuit of their next big win. They might argue (or rationalise to themselves) that they are due for a win or continue to feed money into a poker machine believing that their odds of a payout are increasing with every dollar that they put into it.

We all have a choice about how we use and consume the information that is available to us. We also have an opportunity to become more curious about the patterns we rely on and to think objectively about how they influence the choices and decisions we make on a daily basis. The reality is that often we establish patterns without even realising it - our brain supports us by creating shortcuts that enable us to function more effectively and make faster decisions. Perhaps, instead of always blindly consuming information and content, we pause occasionally to reflect on what we are hearing and seeing.

Grab some family, friends or work colleagues and create some debate over topics that are of interest to you to get some perspectives different to your own. Opening ourselves up to diversity of thought and the experiences of others can be insightful and illuminating, while exploring our own patterns provides an opportunity to reflect on whether those patterns are serving us or holding us back.

‘Genius is vision, often involving the gift of finding patterns where others see nothing but a chance collection of objects’ (Anderson, 2013).

Anderson, E. (2013). '3 Things you can do to think like a genius'. Retrieved from Forbes 3 Things You Can Do To Think Like a Genius (forbes.com)