A Pragmatic Guide To Communication & Change.pdf - NLP Info Centre

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stand side-y-erde w an Eskimo and look at the snow, we would not "see" the same
thing because our models of the world are different. The same is true of individuals who
come into therapy. As we shall see, it is often through their
language that their limited or distorted perception of the world can be known. With this
knowledge we can assist them in learning new ways to talk about their experiences, ways
that will ultimately change their models of the world.
Social Constraints
Another way we create differences in our models is through social constraints. This
filter might be thought. ofas the second level in the model-building process, coming just
after neurological constraints. The primary exazople of social constraints is language,
which operates on our models of the world in two primary and apparently opposite ways.
One way is to enhance and the other is to limit our per, ifAlor of the world around us. It
does this by encoding perceptuel phenomena into labels (words) which are manipulated
by the mind in its efforts to make sense out of experieo-., For example, eskimos have
some seventy different words for snow."' They are able to make distinctions about the
quali0 and structure of snow that are beyond the abilities (d most individuals in the rest of
the world. Obviously this 1, 1
, great survival value to the Eskimo culture. This
deeply'oot od social constraint, exhibited in the Eskimo language, onp+us d, their models of
the world to include perceptions that people from other linguistic backgrounds are unable
to ohserve . An interesting phenomenon occurs when soma"""' 1'u comes fluent in a
language different from his native ton4ue
'there are other forms of social constraints that affect a person's modeling process. As
Coleman' put it, " . his Personality
w development reflects both the larger society in
w
hich he lives .
y
and tech
its institutions, traditions, values, ideas,
intc.nologies - and the immediate family end other rPersonal relationships. ... " (p. 78)
Social customs and
filter it as it comes in. For example, we know that there are sounds both above and la-l- ti,
ability of the human ear to hear, and we know that there are non-visible areas of the
electromagnetic spectrum. This knowledge has been gained through the use of artificial
Mechanisms which translate or re-present these areas into perceivable stimuli. A good
portion of my work as a teacher and counselor is to operate much like those machines.
That is, I work to represent aspects of the environment that they are filtering out or
deleting from their experience. There will be more on that in upcoming sections.
Difference threshold is another term used in the study of perception. This is the minimum
amount of stimulation necessary to be able to detect a difference between two similar
stimuli. This just noticeable difference (j.n.d.) supports the notion that our receptor
organs act as filters to our perception of the world.
Another important concept in the study of perception is the fact that our sensory mechanisms
operate on a process called recurrent inhibition. Because of this neural mechanism,
we tend to receive information from our sense, primarily about changes in our
environment rather than about constant or unchanging aspects of experience. One of the
reasons for including a good bottle of wine with a meal is to stimulate our gustatory-