Aesome Ball Girl and Perception
Kelly Howard
Prof McKinley
Com 2206-320
30 May 2013
“Awesome Ball Girl” and Perception
In the short video of “Awesome Ball Girl”, there is a young ball girl working in the field that makes such a great catch, most professionals would not have been able to make. At the start of the video you would think that you are about to see a home run after a great hit, but my eyes were drawn elsewhere; just like the crowd and two teams. This shows the first stage in the perception process: selection. Selection occurs when one or more of your senses are stimulated, where your mind and body help you choose what stimuli to attend to (Floyd 109). Of my five senses, this video affected my vision and my hearing since I was watching a screen; more senses would have been affected if I would have been in the crowd. We do not necessarily make conscious decisions about which stimuli to notice and which to ignore. Research indicates that there are three characteristics that make a particular stimulus more likely to be selected for attention. (Floyd 109) The first characteristic is that something unusual or unexpected will make a stimulus stand out. Second, that repetition or how frequently you have been exposed to something will make it stand out. Third, the intensity of a stimulus will affect how much you take notice to it. From the video “Awesome Ball Girl”, two of the characteristics that stood out the most for me were repetition and intensity. I do not watch baseball often so since I am not exposed to that sport often, it stood out to me. In addition to not watching that sport often, the intensity of the crowd made me more interested because I knew something big was happening due to hearing the cheering and gasping. By the end of the video, all of my attention was focused on the young ball girl who just made an amazing catch.
Once you have noticed a particular stimulus the next step of the perception process is to classify it by organization, the second stage of the
Prof McKinley
Com 2206-320
30 May 2013
“Awesome Ball Girl” and Perception
In the short video of “Awesome Ball Girl”, there is a young ball girl working in the field that makes such a great catch, most professionals would not have been able to make. At the start of the video you would think that you are about to see a home run after a great hit, but my eyes were drawn elsewhere; just like the crowd and two teams. This shows the first stage in the perception process: selection. Selection occurs when one or more of your senses are stimulated, where your mind and body help you choose what stimuli to attend to (Floyd 109). Of my five senses, this video affected my vision and my hearing since I was watching a screen; more senses would have been affected if I would have been in the crowd. We do not necessarily make conscious decisions about which stimuli to notice and which to ignore. Research indicates that there are three characteristics that make a particular stimulus more likely to be selected for attention. (Floyd 109) The first characteristic is that something unusual or unexpected will make a stimulus stand out. Second, that repetition or how frequently you have been exposed to something will make it stand out. Third, the intensity of a stimulus will affect how much you take notice to it. From the video “Awesome Ball Girl”, two of the characteristics that stood out the most for me were repetition and intensity. I do not watch baseball often so since I am not exposed to that sport often, it stood out to me. In addition to not watching that sport often, the intensity of the crowd made me more interested because I knew something big was happening due to hearing the cheering and gasping. By the end of the video, all of my attention was focused on the young ball girl who just made an amazing catch.
Once you have noticed a particular stimulus the next step of the perception process is to classify it by organization, the second stage of the
Cited: Floyd, Kory. "Chapter 4 Interpersonal Perception." Interpersonal Communication. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 108-13. Print.