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Showing posts with the label apophenia

Learning a New Word: Apophenia

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen No need to be bothered by this five-syllable word because what it describes is interesting, and even useful. I wondered if there was a term for hearing sounds that do not exist where psychosis is not involved. Yes there is. Credit: Freeimages Before I get to the audio part,  pareidolia seems to be more widely known. This is where people think they see things that are not actually there, such as gazing at passing clouds and seeing a dinosaur chasing a car. Pareidolia happens a great deal in the "true ghost" videos where an evil face is seen in a mirror or against a dark background. I was able to see Charles Darwin's profile in a tree , people saw a woman on Mars , and so on. It is probably worth noting that when watching the scary video collections, the viewer is prepped by the verbal cues of the narrator, and by expecting to see something creepy. The audio version is apophenia ( brief definition and pronunciation here ), which is also called musica