mikebird
Banned
Here's an excerpt below from an important article I've been reading about improving communication skills. Sorry if it's boring
Following an interview the week, I got yet another concern about my vocal conversation, on phone or in person. All using the same language, I can read & write. I could tell within a minute the people seemed to give up on me. I have plenty to say, but I didn't follow what they said. It lead to sweating, blushing, appearing nervous and feeling overheated. I expected scientific lab data to be collected and analysed. In just half a hour, these people wanted reports for a sales team. I kept asking, but they couldn't explain what they wanted. The company are a publisher. It was difficult to change perspective from DNA, blood samples, wild animal monitoring to selling books and magazines. I was ushered out. I heard back that they saw my broad experience of data, but found someone more appropriate. I've never been involved in natural data yet, but I'd know how to approach it, and have dealt with a lot of retail statistics.
Next day at the supermarket, the checkout boy was a newbie I never met. I've been OK with previous people I know. I'm friendly and we smile. I saw his lips move, but any words were scrambled and 100% meaningless to me. I assumed his last few words were if I would use cash, cheque or card. Could not hear. I put the card in the slot, and got success. I prepare thoughts in my mind, but any new voice on a phone, meeting or any situation like the interview, I really can't absorb new words. I expect spoken English, but it usually seems as if someone's eating, or a growl, a bark, a squeal...
The below is significant:
Understanding how we understand
Understanding is essentially a pattern-matching process. We create meaning by matching external stimuli from our environment to mental patterns inside our brains.
The human brain is the most complex system we know of. It contains 100 billion neurons (think of a neuron as a kind of switch). The power of the brain lies in its networking capacity. The brain groups neurons into networks that ‘switch on’ during certain mental activities. These networks are infinitely flexible: we can alter existing networks, and grow new ones. The number of possible neural networks in one brain easily exceeds the number of particles in the known universe.
The brain is a mighty networker; but it is also an amazing processor. My computer is a serial processor: it can only do one thing at a time. We can describe the brain as a parallel processor. It can work on many things at once. If one neural circuit finishes before another, it sends the information to other networks so that they can start to use it.
Parallel processing allows the brain to develop a very dynamic relationship with reality. Think of it as ‘bottom-up’ processing and ‘top-down’ processing.
␣␣ Bottom-up processing: The brain doesn’t recognise objects directly. It looks for features, such as shape and colour. The networks that look for features operate independently of each other, and in parallel. ‘Bottom- up’ processing occurs, appropriately, in the lower – and more primitive – parts of the brain, including the brain stem and the cerebellum. The neural networks in these regions send information upwards, into the higher regions of the brain: the neo-cortex.
␣␣ Top-down processing: Meanwhile, the higher-level centres of the brain – in the neo-cortex, sitting above and around the lower parts of the brain – are doing ‘top-down’ processing: providing the mental networks
Following an interview the week, I got yet another concern about my vocal conversation, on phone or in person. All using the same language, I can read & write. I could tell within a minute the people seemed to give up on me. I have plenty to say, but I didn't follow what they said. It lead to sweating, blushing, appearing nervous and feeling overheated. I expected scientific lab data to be collected and analysed. In just half a hour, these people wanted reports for a sales team. I kept asking, but they couldn't explain what they wanted. The company are a publisher. It was difficult to change perspective from DNA, blood samples, wild animal monitoring to selling books and magazines. I was ushered out. I heard back that they saw my broad experience of data, but found someone more appropriate. I've never been involved in natural data yet, but I'd know how to approach it, and have dealt with a lot of retail statistics.
Next day at the supermarket, the checkout boy was a newbie I never met. I've been OK with previous people I know. I'm friendly and we smile. I saw his lips move, but any words were scrambled and 100% meaningless to me. I assumed his last few words were if I would use cash, cheque or card. Could not hear. I put the card in the slot, and got success. I prepare thoughts in my mind, but any new voice on a phone, meeting or any situation like the interview, I really can't absorb new words. I expect spoken English, but it usually seems as if someone's eating, or a growl, a bark, a squeal...
The below is significant:
Understanding how we understand
Understanding is essentially a pattern-matching process. We create meaning by matching external stimuli from our environment to mental patterns inside our brains.
The human brain is the most complex system we know of. It contains 100 billion neurons (think of a neuron as a kind of switch). The power of the brain lies in its networking capacity. The brain groups neurons into networks that ‘switch on’ during certain mental activities. These networks are infinitely flexible: we can alter existing networks, and grow new ones. The number of possible neural networks in one brain easily exceeds the number of particles in the known universe.
The brain is a mighty networker; but it is also an amazing processor. My computer is a serial processor: it can only do one thing at a time. We can describe the brain as a parallel processor. It can work on many things at once. If one neural circuit finishes before another, it sends the information to other networks so that they can start to use it.
Parallel processing allows the brain to develop a very dynamic relationship with reality. Think of it as ‘bottom-up’ processing and ‘top-down’ processing.
␣␣ Bottom-up processing: The brain doesn’t recognise objects directly. It looks for features, such as shape and colour. The networks that look for features operate independently of each other, and in parallel. ‘Bottom- up’ processing occurs, appropriately, in the lower – and more primitive – parts of the brain, including the brain stem and the cerebellum. The neural networks in these regions send information upwards, into the higher regions of the brain: the neo-cortex.
␣␣ Top-down processing: Meanwhile, the higher-level centres of the brain – in the neo-cortex, sitting above and around the lower parts of the brain – are doing ‘top-down’ processing: providing the mental networks