Concepts
The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types
Perception as Predictive Construction
Perception is active predictive construction shaped by expectations and constrained (not determined) by sensory input; the brain continuously minimizes prediction error by either updating its internal model or filtering incoming data to match existing expectations.
Expertise Transforms Perceptual Chunking
Expertise fundamentally changes the size and nature of perceptual chunks—experts automatically perceive larger meaningful patterns as single units, enabling them to work with more complex information within the same working memory constraints.
Automatic Fusion of Observation and Interpretation
Humans automatically and unconsciously fuse observation with interpretation in sub-second timeframes, making the phenomenological separation of raw perception from inference cognitively effortful and often impossible without deliberate training.
Goals as Perceptual Filters
Goals function as perceptual filters that determine relevance by defining signal-detection criteria before information reaches conscious awareness, making relevance a goal-relative property rather than an intrinsic feature of information.
Perceptual Plasticity Through Training
Experience and cultural training shape perceptual processing itself at preconscious levels, enabling the system to make distinctions it previously could not make and causing people from different backgrounds to literally perceive different features of objectively identical stimuli.
Emotion as Systematic Cognitive Modulator
Emotional states systematically distort perception and judgment in specific, predictable directions (fear increases perceived uncertainty and threat while decreasing control; anger does the opposite), serving as necessary somatic markers that guide attention and activate state-dependent memory networks rather than mere sources of error.
Culture Shapes Fundamental Cognition
Cultural context shapes perception, attention allocation, and cognitive processing at a fundamental level, not merely attitudes, preferences, or higher-level reasoning.
Automatic Pattern Perception
The human brain automatically generates and perceives patterns, relationships, and regularities in sensory input prior to and often independent of conscious verification, subject to systematic biases such as confirmation bias that preferentially encode pattern-consistent information while filtering contradictory evidence.
Global-to-Local Perceptual Processing
Human visual perception processes global structure before local details.
Construal Level Effects on Perception
The level of abstraction at which you construe a situation (high-level why versus low-level how) changes what features appear relevant and what actions feel immediately available.