What is it called... mind phenomena? ?

Question

Whenever you see something, you think of something unrelated, but always the same thing. For example, your printer makes you think of your toothbrush, or something.

Also, what is it called when you see something, or learn something, and then start seeing it everywhere. An example would be like the movie 23 where you start seeing patterns in obscure things.

Answer 1

idk thats a really good question though...and omg when I saw the number 23 I saw it EVERYWHERE!!!!

like my birthday is 2/21

my dads initials add up to 23...

after the movie the license plate in front of us was 23 or  32

my friend went 32 mph...and something else on the dashboard was at 23 when he did it...it was creeppyyyy

Answer 2

Mental association, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association...

'In psychology and marketing, two concepts or stimuli are associated when the experience of one leads to the effects of another, due to repeated pairing. This is sometimes called Pavlovian association for Ivan Pavlov's pioneering of classical conditioning.

Association is a widely used memory tool. Associating a new item (an object, a picture, a smell or anything else a person may wish to recall) to another, more easily-remembered item can allow you to think of them both.'

The other is obsessive retardation wherein an abstract notion is mentally associated with a concrete sensory perception. e.g. 1 23 4, wherein the spaces are regarded as supernatural.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association...