Listen to part of a lecture in a psychology class.
旁白：请听一段心理学上的演讲。
[deliberately] We've said that the term "Cognition" refers to mental states like knowing and believing, and to mental processes that we use to arrive at those states.So for example, reasoning is a cognitive process, so is perception.We use information that we perceive through our senses to help us make decisions to arrive at beliefs and so on.And then there are memory and imagination which relate to the knowledge of things that happen in the past or may happen in the future.So perceiving, remembering, imagining are all internal mental processes that lead to knowing or believing.Yet, each of these processes has limitations, and can lead us to hold mistaken beliefs or make false predictions.Take memory for example, maybe you have heard of studies in which people hear a list of related words.Ah, let's say a list of different kinds of fruit.After hearing this list, they are presented with several additional words.In this case, we'll say the additional words were "blanket" and "cherry".Neither of these words was on the original list, and, well, people will claim correctly that "blanket" was not on the original list, they'll also claim incorrectly that the word "cherry" was on the list.Most people are convinced they heard the word "cherry" on the original list.Why do they make such a simple mistake?Well, we think because the words on the list were so closely related, the brain stored only the gist of what they heard.For example, that all the items on the list were types of the fruit.When we tap our memory, our brains often fill in details and quite often these details are actually false.We also see this "fill-in" phenomenon with perception.
教授：我们已经说过，“认知力”指的是这样的精神状态：熟悉某事并相信它确实存在，精神层面上我们曾经达到这样的状态。所以，比如说，推理是一种认知过程，这就是认识能力。我们通过感官获得信息，帮助我们做出决定抵达信念的彼岸等等。然后，我们还有记忆力和想象力，这些都跟过去发生过的或未来可能发生的背景知识相关。因此，认识能力，记忆力和想象力，这些都是引导我们熟悉某事物并相信其存在的内在精神过程。然而，每一个过程都有其局限性，可能会让我们产生错误的信念或做出错误的预测。比如记忆力，也许你们听过这样的一次研究，研究中人们听一列相关单词。啊，就说一列不同种类的水果类单词。在听了单词后，他们会说出一些附加的词汇。在这种情况下，我们会说到的附加的单词是“blanket 毛毯”和“cheery 快乐的”。这些词都没有在原先的单词表上出现过，而且，嗯，人们会准确的说到，“blanket”没有在原单词表上，他们也会错误得认为“cheery”就有在单词表上。大多数人确信他们听到了“cherry”这个词在最初的名单上。为什么他们会犯这么简单的错误呢？我们认为原因是单词表上的单词都很相关。大脑会将我们听到的主旨信息储存起来。比如说，所有的单词表上的单词都是各种水果。当我们回忆的时候，大脑经常会填补记忆的细节，而很多时候这些细节实际上是错误的。我们也是通过认知能力捕获这些“填补”的现象。
Perception is the faculty that allows us to process information in the present as we take it via our senses.Again, studies have shown that people will fill in information that they thought they perceived even when they didn't.For example, experiments have been done where a person hears a sentence, but it is missing the word, that logically completes it.They'll claim to hear that word even though it was never said.So if I were to say... er... the sunrise is in the... and then fill to complete the sentence, people will often claim to have heard the word "east".
认知能力是一种通过我们的感官允许我们在当下处理信息的能力。研究在一次表明，大脑会填补一些他们没有获得而自己以为获得了的信息。比如说，在某些实验中，参加测试的人听到了一个句子，但没有捕捉到逻辑连接词。他们会说听到了这个词，尽管根本就没有这个词。所以如果我说，额，太阳从……升起，然后让大家填补完整句子，他们经常会说自己听到了“东边”这个词。
In cognitive psychology, we have a phrase for this kind of inaccurate "filling in of details",it's called: A Blind Spot.The term originally refers to the place in our eyes where the optic nerve connects the back of the eye to the brain.There are no photo receptors in the area where the nerve connects to the eye.So that particular area of the eye is incapable of detecting images.It produces "A Blind Spot" in our field vision.We are unaware of it, because the brain fills in what it thinks belongs in its image, so the picture always appears complete to us.But the term "blind spot" has also taken on a more general meaning, it refers to people being unaware of a bias that may affect their judgment about the subject.And the same "blind-spot phenomenon" that affects memory and perception also affects imagination.Imagination is a faculty that some people use to anticipate future events in their lives.But the ease with which we imagine details can lead to unrealistic expectations and can bias our decisions.
该术语原本指的是我们眼睛里的某一部位该部位的视神经将眼睛的背部