a strange experience

[FireDragon76]

Earlier today I was digging around in the pantry looking for food and I could swear I saw this carton of apple sauce that said "Waffle House", quite vividly, and I thought that odd, but I kept looking. Then I looked back and I could see the words "White House".

So did I technically have a hallucination? I was wearing my reading glasses but I see OK with them on.

The only thing similar I've seen was an online schizophrenia simulator, and pages of a newspaper would have headlines that would turn into violent or frightening messages that were similar to the letters on the real page.

I was indeed thinking of waffles at the time, but it only occurred to me after I saw the "hallucination".

Is this normal? Did I really hallucinate? I 'm wondering what happened?

I took psychology in college for a few semesters but it was a long time ago and I never got to the really nitty-gritty stuff for a career. I was just a liberal arts major.

 

[Another Lazarus]

Thats quite normal i guess

 

[Tomm]

Earlier today I was digging around in the pantry looking for food and I could swear I saw this carton of apple sauce that said "Waffle House", quite vividly, and I thought that odd, but I kept looking. Then I looked back and I could see the words "White House".

So did I technically have a hallucination? I was wearing my reading glasses but I see OK with them on.

I believe it's normal, perhaps you were thinking of waffle in your mind at that moment.

 

[Tom 1]

Remember we see with our brains, not our eyes, the eyes just let the data in. White and Waffle are pretty similar, maybe it could be likened to a kind of temporary dyslexia. Or maybe you had a pretty strong Waffle House fixation at that moment! Sounds like a cognitive imprint rather than a hallucination, hallucinations tend to be more random. Similar to looking at a clock with a second hand, and your brain taking a moment to register that it’s moving.

 

[FireDragon76]

Years ago, I read about the term for this specifically, but I can't remember it.

 

[Tom 1]

Same

 

[Ophiolite]

Earlier today I was digging around in the pantry looking for food and I could swear I saw this carton of apple sauce that said "Waffle House", quite vividly, and I thought that odd, but I kept looking. Then I looked back and I could see the words "White House".

So did I technically have a hallucination? I was wearing my reading glasses but I see OK with them on.

On more than one occassion I've mistaken an approaching individual for someone I was expecting, or thought more likely to be there. The illusion persisted, in detail, well beyond the point where the obscurity of distance could explain it. At a certain point the illusory face would instantly be replaced by their true face. It's one of the reasons I have close to zero confidence in eye-witness testimony.

 

[bhillyard]

A good reader picks up the initial and final letters of a word and its shape. waffle and white on this basis are alike. One result of this is putting text in block capitals slows the reader up and reduces their understanding if it is applied to large blocks of text as opposed to the occasional word.

 

[HitchSlap]

Also a reminder as to why eye witnesses testimony carries less credibility.

 

[Ophiolite]

Also a reminder as to why eye witnesses testimony carries less credibility.

Eye witness testimony is as reliable as a stuffed aardvark as a dance partner in a tango competition.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Eye witness testimony is as reliable as a stuffed aardvark as a dance partner in a tango competition.

There's your problem - anteaters are the go-to mammalian insectivore for tango competitions