What you see in the clouds might say something about you

_Elsa_

Aha! Maybe this is the article that will tell him what it’s all about!

‘If you spend enough time looking at the sky, you will start seeing shapes in the clouds — a hippo, a dragon, a human face. The phenomenon is so common that it has its own hashtag: #cloudsthatlooklikethings.

The reason we see animals, monsters and people in the sky has nothing to do with meteorology and everything to do with the mechanics of the human brain. We are just as likely to see familiar objects in trees, toast or Cheetos. This tendency is called pareidolia, and it’s a byproduct of the peculiar way we process visual information. 

“I think sometimes people imagine that the way vision works, say, is that there’s a stepwise process,” said Kara Federmeier, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Illinois. Such a process would work this way: You see a white, fluffy mass. You identify this shape as a cloud and then retrieve any relevant information about clouds. 

But that’s not actually how it works, Federmeier said. Rather, when you lay eyes on an object, you search your memories for anything that might resemble that object. If you spy a cloud, you will recall memories of clouds, but you might also gather memories of marshmallows, cotton candy or whipped cream. You will then sort through those memories to determine that you are looking at the sky and not dessert.

“The visual system is constantly sending messy, only partially analyzed information forward into memory. It’s sort of saying: ‘Here’s some stuff. What do you have that looks anything like this?’ ” Federmeier said. 

Because clouds so often look like cotton candy or whipped cream, we tend not to remark on the resemblance. But sometimes a cloud calls forth memories of something unexpected, like a horse, and we take notice. That’s pareidolia at work.’ (Source) 

“So it’s our brain that makes us see these things?” Yeti thinks to himself. “I have to find a definition of that word – pareidolla. Maybe that will help me get a better grip on this.”

 Let’s continue - Seeing things that aren’t there? It’s called pareidolia

Start at the beginning – Let’s go to the beach!