Different Jobs, Different Brains? | Alternative Fruit

Captain
by Kultur

​​We all know that different jobs require different thoughts in order to do them, it's pretty obvious that various tasks require different training and education in order to learn. But does it go further than just what we think? Is the way we think also in question? A team of scientists have sought to find an answer to this question by learning about brain processes in a group of architects, a group of sculptors, and in a group of artists, three distinctively differing occupations.


The team from the psychology and language departments at Australia National University, Bangor University, and the University College London, set to work on designing and completing the analysis. It was noted that sculptors, architects, and artists all communicate their thoughts about spacial orientation in specific ways, inferring that they think about the concept in different ways also. They released their findings here and in Cognitive Science journal.


A group of 32 individuals were chosen, each with at least eight years within their field. This would ensure that their brain function and thought process would have had time to truly adjust to the professional environment.. It was found that architects tend to speak about space in terms of its borders and boundaries, where as painters spoke about it in terms of its shape and dimensions. Sculptors were more able to utilise both language sets. All three professions were shown to use a much more diverse array of language skills to describe spatial features than non-spatially orientated professions.


The way we describe things in language greatly affects how we perceive what we have and what it can be used for and with. The tool of descriptive analysis gives ways to ration and logic by means of association and likeness, which can be metaphorical or natural. The self-talk and memory of information both require language and description, and these will be based on the way we have learned about the subject and the people in which we communicate with about it. Our linguistic landscape is shaped by the reading and listening we do each day. As phraseology and rhetoric make their way into our minds, it is echoed back in the way we think and ultimately make decisions.


As shown in the experiment, the way the artists, sculptors, and architects were thinking followed a trend with their profession. It wasn't simply the vocabulary that differed, but the way in which the images and objects were perceived and described was significantly different in all three groups. This suggests that the thinking processes and neuron information exchange is significantly varied across job roles. Would this suggest that certain people are more inclined towards certain fields or does it simply mean that what goes in comes back out again? Perhaps it is a bit of both.  

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