Being an expert influences what we see, literally – which may explain confusing conversations you’ve had with clients. As a press release from Johns Hopkins for a Wiley, Wilson and Rapp study reports, “Visual processing is influenced by experience.” People who were experts in Arabic and also those who didn’t know the language were asked by Wiley and colleagues to indicate if pairs of letters shown were the same or different, and the speed and accuracy of assessments were measured.
Researchers found that, “Novices were quicker to differentiate letters while experts were more accurate. Yet the more features a letter had, the slower the novices were. Experts were just the opposite – the more horizontals, whorls and curves a letter had, the better they were at distinguishing it…The pairs that tripped up people who weren’t proficient in Arabic tended to look nothing like the ones that confused the pros. Experts were biased by non-visual things they knew about the letters, like the names of the letters, how they are written or the way they sound.”
One of the study authors, Wiley, is quoted in the press release: “’If you’re an expert, things that look complex to a novice look simple to you…What we find should hold true for any sort of object – cars, birds, faces. Expertise matters…Part of being an expert is learning what matters and what doesn’t matter – including visual features. You know what to look for.’”
“What You Know Can Affect How You See.” 2016. Press release, Johns Hopkins University, http://releases.jhu.edu/2016/03/01/what-you-know-can-affect-how-you-see/.
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.