We receive information about the world around us through our senses. Eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin encode objects of reality into visual, sound, gustatory, olfactory or tactile images. Sensation and perception help us acquire the necessary knowledge about the world around us and life experience. Everything previously seen we can get out of memory, thanks to the process of representation.
The concept of representation in psychology
This term means a mental process and is described as the re-creation in the mind of objects or phenomena that we cannot observe at the moment, but due to the fact that we saw it earlier, some information remained in our memory.
The process of representation in psychology plays a very important role for a person in the process of cognition. Written speech, creation of artistic or musical images and thinking are directly related to this process.
Performance characteristics
From the point of view of psychology, the formation of ideas occurs due to the process of perception. Wewe photograph or record an image or phenomenon on our internal voice recorder, thanks to memory, we fix it in our minds. Thinking processes this data and assigns the required format.
Visibility
The first characteristic feature of representation in psychology is visibility. If perception gives us a vividly perceptible picture, sound, taste, smell or tactile sensation, then representation reproduces this data in a more faded form.
Fragmentary
The next characteristic is fragmentation. Since we have to recreate from memory, many elements are simply lost, bright moments, episodes remain. Colors, shapes, spatial arrangement may be distorted. We also perceive faces not holistically, but remember only individual features.
Impermanence
Impermanence can be considered one of the most significant characteristics. Any image runs the risk of being erased from consciousness, even if we try our best to keep it. To restore it, a person needs strong-willed efforts.
Fluidity and volatility
Fluidity and volatility are characterized by the fact that it is difficult for us to focus on any one element of the representation image. Our inner attention will slip away. However, a talented artist may focus on visual elements, a musician on sound elements, a perfumer on olfactory elements, and so on.
Generalization
Since we use the representation every day, for faster work the braincompresses the information it contains. In fact, this leads to a generalization of images. This applies even to very specific subjects. For example, we hold the phone in our hands almost 24 hours a day, but when we hear this word, we draw a generalized image of this gadget in our minds.
Types of representations by types of sensations
A significant part of human representations is based on visual images. We can remember an object in all the details and nuances, if in the past we had the opportunity to concentrate our attention on it for a long time, but more often our brain remembers some separate fragment or characteristic: color, shape, detail, etc. Often in our representations we we see a flat picture, less often a three-dimensional one. The image can be either color or black and white, sometimes even colorless.
Auditory representations in psychology are the mental reproduction of sounds. They are conditionally divided into speech and music. The first ones turn on when you need to pronounce a word in your mind, remember the timbre, intonation. Musical performances can be the result of acquired experience in the form of songs, arias, etc., listened to, or independently generated by the brain if a person has the talent of a composer.
Motor sensations have a huge difference from all the others because the images do not quietly float in the brain, but are transferred to the body and provoke a slight muscle contraction, which can be fixed with special equipment. They are not a reproduction of past sensations, but are associated withrelevant that we are experiencing at the moment.
Spatial representations in psychology are a combination of visual and motor. It is activated when, for example, we remember the way from home to school or university.
Individual presentation features
Each person has his own type of representation, according to this criterion, all people can be conditionally divided into 4 groups:
- visuals (the most developed visual representations);
- audials (the most developed auditory representations);
- kinesthetics (motor representations predominate);
- mixed type.
Persons with a high level of development of visual representations easily reproduce the information they have seen, that is, they have a photographic memory. To master the information, they need to rely on diagrams, tables or graphs. If they remember text from a book, they remember what the page looked like and where the right sentence was placed.
Audials remember and reproduce information in the form of sounds, voices. Even remembering the text they read, they hear the timbre of their inner voice.
Kinesthetics remember information by sketching, writing down. For them, action is important. These people are good spatial thinkers with a focus on their bodies.
Pure visuals, auditory and kinesthetics are quite rare, more often all three types of representation are combined in people.
If you do not know which group you belong to, this information aboutcan be obtained not only on the basis of self-observation, but also thanks to the methods of psychology. Representing objects and recalling them in your memory is one of the most effective ways.
