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 Stage one, selection, helped me with stage two, organization because I knew what caught my attention. Seeing a girl running down the side of the field, hearing the crowd cheering and the announcer going crazy made me realize that something spectacular was happening even though I don’t watch baseball often. Once my attention was focused on the ball girl, I was able to use the types of schemas to classify the information that my mind noticed. The third and final stage of the perception process is interpretation. Interpretation in the perception process is assigning all of the information from selection and organization and forming a personal meaning. Three factors: experience, knowledge and closeness can all affect how you interpret something that you perceive (Floyd 111). Every person’s interpretations will most likely differ. For me, experience plays the biggest role since I used to play softball. I know how hard it can be to catch a ball at the rear of the outfield, let alone trying to scale a wall before catching the ball; which proves to me that this young ball girl has a lot of talent. To some people that may be avid baseball fans that attend a lot of games, this could be an event they will never forget, but for me, it is just a very impressive video that I will probably potentially forget about due to my lack of interest in baseball. I do not have doubts that this video is not real or accurate. Crazier things
