NLP Framework - Understanding Associations and Distinctions

In our last article, we examined how you make up a model of the world to guide your actions every day. In this article, we'll go a bit deeper and begin to analyze some of the most basic patterns with which you weave your model of the world.

Associations

How are you able to recognize people at your workplace, or know the meanings of the lyrics a rock star is singing? What enables you to perform complex tasks like taking a shower without having to be aware of each and every muscle movement necessary to lather, rinse and dry your body in a coordinated fashion? The answer lies in the brain's ability to create and record seemingly infinite patterns of associations and distinctions, and compare these patterns with ongoing experience to make meaning. To thoroughly appreciate just how complex and amazing this system is, you can take a moment to trace the sources of these patterns and determine what they are comprised of.

What is a unit of experience, and how is it assembled into those patterns we store as templates? The following example is a loose analogy of the process:

Have you ever looked at mosaic pictures? These are pictures that are made up of many other tiny pictures. If you've never seen one, do a search on Google for "mosaic picture." If you were to look closely at such a picture, you would see that the image is made up of dozens of tiny pictures, and that the size of the pictures, as well as their brightness, varies, depending on the shape you are viewing is supposed to appear to the naked eye. If you isolate one picture in a magnifying glass, it has little meaning for the whole. Even widening your scope to include ten pictures may not result in an emerging image, in terms of the overall picture. If you widen your scope far enough, the pattern of tiny pictures may begin to give you a clue, and you might begin to rcognize a pattern you can identify as an eye or beak. When you remove the magnifying glass altogether, you recognize the pattern of a penguin (or whatever object you have been viewing). One picture... several pictures... the whole pattern. For our analogy to hold, let's suppose that one picture represents one "unit" of visual sensory experience.

Even recognizing the letters in this sentence (the letter E, for example) requires recording and accessing a pattern of many individual units of visual "data". To make sense of these individual patterns may require assembling them into still larger patterns. For example, even though you recognize individual letters in this text, creating meaning from the pattern of letters in the word "cat" requires accessing further associations. We have learned that the word cat is a symbol for another experience. This symbol is associated with various experiences stored in memory, and in order to decide which of these experiences is the one referred to, you need to add more symbols, which, through chains af association, eventually leads you to the experience referred to in the communication. Is it a small, friendly tiger cat, or a big fluffy white Persian?

To understand that last sentence, you had to perceive individual units of experience, grouped in patterns that you know as letters, which you then put together into patterns that you call words. And yet, you don't need verbal language to make out visual patterns.

Stop for a second.

Wherever you are right now, take a look around you and notice anything that you don't recognize, even if you don't say anything to yourself about it. You recognize familiar objects instantaneously due to the stored templates you have in memory, as you match the objects you are viewing on the outside to those templates. Not only do you have the ability to recognize instantly, but you also have patterns of association in memory that make it possible for you to identify what you see. Identifying an object is a matter of accessing patterns of associations that tell you what that object does; what are its characteristics; how it acts or reacts; what you can expect when it's around; what you can actually do with it. Through identification, you can know if that object presents a threat and how you can avoid it. You perform all this with chains of associations recorded in memory.

In the last paragraph, I used the word "object" but it can also mean person or animal. Also, I used visual words to describe the processes of recognition and identification. The same can apply to the other senses as well (auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory). You recognize and identify through all five senses.

Distinctions

The most useful way to understand distinctions is that they are the differences you discern between otherwise similar experiences (people, objects or events). Obviously, you can instantly notice the differences between similar people, objects or events. What really matters is HOW you use these distinctions in our daily experience.

One way to understand distinctions is that they are the "switchpoints" in patterns of associations. You can easily notice this when you communicate with someone else. Let's say you're talking to your buddy. You use adjectives and adverbs in your language (distinctions) to help your body access the appropriate patterns of associations in their memory, to help them comprehend more fully what you're saying. Let's use an example to make this obvious.

I'll use the word car. You associate the word car with a generic experience. Now, using a few distinctions, embedded as adjectives and adverbs, you'll access a few specific experiences. Car 1: silver, 4-door, noisy, wide tires, alloy wheels is different from Car 2: red, 2-door, silent, dusty tires.

As I said before, these descriptions are available in all sensory modes. What is the difference between looking at a silver car and driving a silver car? The second one will probably lead you to remember touching a steering wheel, grabbing a stickshift and maybe even the sound of the engine as you step on the accelerator.

When you're in the here-now (without describing experience in language), you also use distinctions. When you play basketball, for instance, you have to discern players from your team and players of the opposing team, so you can know to whom you can pass the ball. While it quickly becomes unconscious, you first had to create distinctions concerning your team's uniform and the other team's uniform. While the shape of the uniforms might be identical, their colors most probably aren't. Without needing words to identify each team, you associate the color of the uniform to the act of passing the ball. A distinction between the uniforms allows to know to whom to pass.

Let's go over this one last time...

You store individual units of sensory experience. These units combine to create patterns that are stored in memory and serve as a template you use to recognize and identify people, objects and events. Patterns of color, shapes, and brightness allow you to recognize and identify visually. Patterns of pitch, timbre and volume allow you to recognize and identify auditorily. Patterns of temperature, intensity and pressure allow you to recognize and identify kinesthetically. Patterns of flavor, pungency and sweetness allow you to recognize and identify gustatorily. Patterns of smell, aroma and bouquet allow you to recognize and identify olfactorily.

All of these assemble to inform you about your environment. You record these patterns and use them as templates against which you peg our ongoing experience. This enables you to interpret what's going on in your environment and what to expect from it.

In upcoming articles we'll discuss how you use associations and distinctions in more complex mental processes.

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