{"id":231354,"date":"2026-02-14T05:29:49","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T11:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/cognitive-scientist-explains-how-we-see-what-isnt-real"},"modified":"2026-02-14T05:29:49","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T11:29:49","slug":"cognitive-scientist-explains-how-we-see-what-isnt-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/cognitive-scientist-explains-how-we-see-what-isnt-real","title":{"rendered":"Cognitive scientist explains how we \u2018see\u2019 what isn\u2019t real"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/cognitive-scientist-explains-how-we-see-what-isnt-real.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Imagine this: A person walks into a room and knocks a ball off a table.<\/p>\n<p>Did you imagine the gender of the person? The color of the ball? The position of the person relative to the ball?<\/p>\n<p>Yes and no, says cognitive scientist Tomer Ullman, the Morris Kahn Associate Professor of Psychology, who with Halely Balaban recently published a paper titled \u201cThe Capacity Limits of Moving Objects in the Imagination.\u201d If you\u2019re like most people, you probably thought about some of these things, but not others. People build mental imagery hierarchically, starting with the ideas of \u201cperson,\u201d \u201croom,\u201d \u201cball,\u201d and \u201ctable,\u201d then placing them in relation to one another in space, and only later filling in details like color.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur imaginations are actually patchwork and fuzzy and not filled in,\u201d he said. His theory: Your mind\u2019s eye might be lazier than you think. But that\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing. \u201cYou leave things out until you need them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For the latest installment of \u201cOne Word Answer,\u201d we asked Ullman to elaborate further on the current scientific thinking behind \u201cimagination.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Less like a picture, more like a video game? \u201cOur imaginations are actually patchwork and fuzzy and not filled in,\u201d says Tomer Ullman.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/cognitive-scientist-explains-how-we-see-what-isnt-real\">Continue reading \u201cCognitive scientist explains how we \u2018see\u2019 what isn\u2019t real\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine this: A person walks into a room and knocks a ball off a table. Did you imagine the gender of the person? The color of the ball? The position of the person relative to the ball? Yes and no, says cognitive scientist Tomer Ullman, the Morris Kahn Associate Professor of Psychology, who with Halely [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":701,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/701"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}