U see, im not that person who are easily distracted to noise. Once i concentrated with my study, even people call me also, i wont be noticed people are calling me. Or even when they are gossip something also i wont be bother n notice what they say, since im focusing on my work. However, if they spell out some magic word like mcdonald, kfc, pizza hut, suddenly it caught my attention. This is so mysteries. Even when i am far away or next to the room or when people whispering, even i pay full of concentration, when people do spell those magic word, somehow i wont never miss that word n it gets my attention. Can anyone explain this, what phenomn of this called?

I only hv a little clue on this. It has to do with our brain, although our ears will pick every sounds in the surrounding, however, it will get filtered and we'll concentrate on the sound that we want to hear, smth called the cock-tailed phenomena I think xD

Before we could divulge the biochemistry properties of your brain, did you ever wonder, that perhaps you already missed many of those "magic" words that people had whispered while you are concentrating, and it so happens that when your brain took a pause to recuperate from intense focus, that you overheard those words, during such a small frame of window?

no, i am confirm. actually even my family notice as well. Everytime, when they mention those magic word, they will look at me because they knew that i would respond. It almost like a reflex

This post has been edited by kuroman84: Jul 25 2009, 06:03 PM

kuroman84,

It is VERY SIMPLE. You watched TOO MANY McD and KFC advertisements. Stay away from TV, Radio and so on for a few weeks and see what happened.

I do not watch TV, listen to Radio, and read newspaper. None of stuff can brain wash me.

Stay away from Star newspaper. You have been poisoned.

Dreamer

Start a revolution dreamer101.

Only then people can be convinced.

Erm, so, how do you keep yourself up to date? Just wondering.

ya,Dreamer101...how do u keep urself updated with current situation w/o reading the news??

This post has been edited by vivienne85: Jul 25 2009, 11:51 PM

you are Hungry.

or you maybe experiencing synethsesia, which is basically the mixing up of senses; anything from seeing sounds to hearing colors. This can happen naturally or can result as a side effect of some psychadellic drugs. For instance, in one study a person, ever since they were young, would always taste different things when they heard certain sounds, like tasting eggs whenever hearing a "K" sound. Either that or your friend is just a nut job hope this helped

Your brain will choose to filter some specific words that you are interested with... as I study media, different people will react differently to the same advertisement. They will filter out a different message and retain the message differently according to what they are interested in...

As stated earlier, it's called cocktailed phenomenon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect

I think you have been subjected to (classical) conditioning. These fast foods that you've mentioned is desirable to you. And you associate those words to the presence of the fast food. Therefore when you hear these words (stimulus) you'll have a response to it. This experiment was first carried out by Ivan Pavlov.

He did a test on some dog by ringing a metronome before feeding them and observing whether they salivate. At first the dogs only salivate after seeing or smelling the food. He continued doing the same thing for a few days. After a few days, the dogs started salivating once they hear the metronome, even without having the food.

More facts can be found in Wikipedia: Classical Conditioning

You love fast food too much!

Stop your internal dialogue and you are done. But tell you, it is not easy.

Some techniques might help :
1) Before reading, cross your eyes until everything is blur and curl your hands in order to saturate your attention. Continue this until you have reached inner silence. Then proceed to reading

What yu are experiencing is a phenomenon called classical conditioning. What did yu study in school?

Regards, Joey

p.s: Oh ya...yu may want to omit those unnecessary matters in regards of the conditioning.

This kinda a brain conditioning is interesting and could be powerful, when its understood and used properly.

A person known to me, has this as well, he has programmed himself to listen to his alarm ringtone only, hence no matter, what ever alarm rings during his sleep he doesn’t hear it (at least the conscious mind) at all, only when his alarm rings, he wakes up!

Its because the body and mind has associated an alarm ringing with waking up. That how our minds work what. It is partly also why companies pay so much money to advertise their goods and services via the mass media. Imagine if you kept seeing that McDonald's ad day in, day out. Eventually you'll want to try it.

So the question is that, why doesnt it work for everyone?

In normal circumstances, when A alarm rings, the person would wake...but then we have peculiar cases as I quoted above, he only wakes up to his alarm, and not anybody else.

His wife tested with 2 different alarm, but none worked, but to only his alarm!

Ingrained in his mind already perhaps? It works the same with me really, I ONLY wake up to my iPhone's alarm and not any others. Much like we are all unique, certain things don't affect people I suppose.

I can tell exactly what is that...I'm a biology grad. I remember when i was in the Uni, i took up a course on animal behavior.

In every organism with complex brain, especially in higher class organisms like mammals, our mind can be "conditioned" to respond to certain stimuli. This is called "mind conditioning". You will know this once i mention Pavlov's Dog experiment.

The theory is this, probably your mind is "conditioned" in a way to react simultaneously to stimuli - for you is Mc D, KFC. In Pavlov's experiment, the dog reacts instantaneously to bell (with absence of food) - salivating almost immediately because thinking that the stimuli is actually food.

You are reacting almost the same like Pavlov's dog everytime because KFC and Mc D makes you think of food...so even without the actual food, only uttering the word Mc D or KFC alone will catch ur attention....

This post has been edited by gstrapinuse: Aug 19 2009, 07:28 PM

same explanation can be found when, say you tend to sleep with music on. and thus your ears immune and adapt to the environment. and when waking up time comes, you fail to hear the alarm.

one reason for you to be aware of such keywords because your brain has several layer of memories. it is arranged in such way that it is in accordance to the most important one on the top and so on. it is likely that you were experiencing hunger, therefore your brain matches your emotion with external factors.

and that once youre notified, you may act upon it. so the brain makes aware of such keywords to you so you would eat.

Lol! This implies that fast food takes a major precedence in his life for him to be distracted to that degree when even the word is uttered.

yes precisely. his brain must have has accustomed hunger > eat > food > fast food. college student perhaps? fast food = staple diet.

Should we then experiment on whether he reacts in his sleep? If so, that's really bad man

it could be a good thing. see most people fall into deep slumber. and thus deactivate all form of senses that signals external influence into our brain to process and so on. this is dangerous as danger happens, you have no awareness towards it. say a fire, your brain would fail to inform you to react. and you would die from excessive smoke or burnt to death.

Would the Kitty Genovese's case applicable here? It happened and it was horrendous!

Regards, Joey

p.s: Rest in Peace, Catherine Susan Genovese. May your soul be rested. God bless us all. Amen.

This post has been edited by Joey Christensen: Aug 22 2009, 09:52 AM

Folks,

You watched TOO MUCH TV, commercial, advertisement and so on. You have been BRAIN WASHED. It is in your sub-conscious mind.

I stop reading newspaper, watch TV and so on for many many years. Those fast food stuff no longer affect me.

Dreamer

Huh? I dun get you. Once a thing has been embedded into your sub conscious mind, it is non reversible...
It is some kind of association, for eg. when u think of Mc D===> it means burger and fast food, when u think of coca cola===> soft drink. It cannot be erased forever unless u met a serious accident and have permanent memory lost...

The "association" will stay on with u forever. U WON'T wake up one day and suddenly when ppl mention COCA COLA, u do not know what the heck is that....THIS WILL DEFINITELY WONT HAPPEN....if it does, u r in deep sh*t...lolz....

The answer is self-perception. You are your own phenomenon.

I strongly suspect that the Kitty Genovese story is just a moral story, i.e one where the facts have been changed in order to make a moral exhortation.

Sort of like a darker Chicken Soup for the Soul, or one of those bullshit forwarded emails I get every day.